1 00:00:00,777 --> 00:00:03,527 (bird screeches) 2 00:00:05,025 --> 00:00:07,775 (ominous music) 3 00:00:08,625 --> 00:00:12,000 (woodpecker pecking) 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:13,770 Hidden from site is a kingdom 5 00:00:13,770 --> 00:00:16,030 that rules all life on land. 6 00:00:16,030 --> 00:00:17,230 They're landing on me. 7 00:00:18,243 --> 00:00:21,680 We have this coding that's falling right now all around us. 8 00:00:21,680 --> 00:00:24,350 They're on your food, they're in your lungs, 9 00:00:24,350 --> 00:00:26,830 they're on your skin, they're on each thing you touch. 10 00:00:26,830 --> 00:00:28,250 They're each place you go. 11 00:00:31,210 --> 00:00:34,675 They are a single interconnected network. 12 00:00:34,675 --> 00:00:37,250 Could be described as a third mode of life. 13 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:40,610 It's an alien world 14 00:00:40,610 --> 00:00:43,240 of powerful ancient life forms. 15 00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:47,560 This entire web of life is connected, 16 00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:49,500 and it's connected through the fungi. 17 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,340 Some of those will save us, some of those threaten us, 18 00:00:54,340 --> 00:00:57,090 and we're just beginning to understand which are which. 19 00:01:02,440 --> 00:01:04,784 They shaped our world, 20 00:01:04,784 --> 00:01:06,384 and hold the key for our future. 21 00:01:07,610 --> 00:01:10,580 This is the kingdom of fungi. 22 00:01:13,730 --> 00:01:16,897 (inspirational music) 23 00:01:24,114 --> 00:01:29,114 (bright music) (birds chirping) 24 00:01:29,131 --> 00:01:31,630 Fungi are not plants, they're not animals. 25 00:01:31,630 --> 00:01:33,590 They're a kingdom in their own right. 26 00:01:39,450 --> 00:01:42,340 Many people think of them as plants 27 00:01:42,340 --> 00:01:46,770 perhaps because they don't move, they just sit there 28 00:01:46,770 --> 00:01:50,684 But in fact, fungi are much more closely related to animals 29 00:01:50,684 --> 00:01:53,970 than they are to plants, and like animals, 30 00:01:53,970 --> 00:01:55,980 they have to eat other organisms. 31 00:01:59,993 --> 00:02:02,400 When we think of fungi at all, 32 00:02:02,400 --> 00:02:03,960 we think of mushrooms. 33 00:02:05,158 --> 00:02:07,270 But these are just the fruit. 34 00:02:07,270 --> 00:02:09,930 A small part of the fungal life that's all around us. 35 00:02:11,711 --> 00:02:13,611 They're just the tip of the iceberg. 36 00:02:15,750 --> 00:02:18,450 They're the outward sign of a presence of a fungus. 37 00:02:22,400 --> 00:02:24,720 Ah, look at this. 38 00:02:25,570 --> 00:02:30,570 The main part of fungus is a whole mass of fine filaments, 39 00:02:30,730 --> 00:02:34,240 which together form what is called the mycelium. 40 00:02:34,240 --> 00:02:37,140 The mycelium is the body of the fungus. 41 00:02:37,140 --> 00:02:40,900 It spreads through the soil eating everything in its path, 42 00:02:40,900 --> 00:02:43,160 and even penetrates solid wood. 43 00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:47,420 They can get there by physical penetrative force, 44 00:02:47,420 --> 00:02:50,630 but also by producing enzymes 45 00:02:50,630 --> 00:02:54,470 which digest the materials that they're growing into. 46 00:02:56,050 --> 00:02:59,510 These enzymes are the teeth and claws of fungi. 47 00:03:00,990 --> 00:03:04,090 Well we're very familiar with single celled organisms, 48 00:03:04,090 --> 00:03:05,140 could be bacteria. 49 00:03:06,711 --> 00:03:09,510 And and multicellular organisms, so plants and animals. 50 00:03:09,510 --> 00:03:11,130 The fungi are unusual 51 00:03:11,130 --> 00:03:15,280 because they are a single interconnected network. 52 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:17,790 So much is unknown. 53 00:03:17,790 --> 00:03:21,080 Almost every time we do an experiment, 54 00:03:21,080 --> 00:03:23,010 we're seeing something 55 00:03:23,010 --> 00:03:24,200 that nobody else has ever seen before. 56 00:03:25,150 --> 00:03:27,170 The whole of their growth and development 57 00:03:27,170 --> 00:03:30,350 depends on what's going on in their environment, 58 00:03:30,350 --> 00:03:32,760 whereas for animals and plants, for an animal, 59 00:03:32,760 --> 00:03:34,190 once you've got your arms and your legs, 60 00:03:34,190 --> 00:03:35,390 you don't grow a new one 61 00:03:36,424 --> 00:03:37,450 depending on whether you need it or not. 62 00:03:39,209 --> 00:03:40,937 Unlike animals, 63 00:03:40,937 --> 00:03:43,350 the body of the fungus is constantly changing shape 64 00:03:43,350 --> 00:03:45,880 in a relentless search for food. 65 00:03:47,960 --> 00:03:49,610 It can keep spreading. 66 00:03:49,610 --> 00:03:52,080 And it can recycle material that's not useful, 67 00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:54,460 and use all of that material to grow somewhere else. 68 00:03:54,460 --> 00:03:56,640 So it can actually migrate in the environment 69 00:03:56,640 --> 00:03:59,560 depending on whether it can find food or not. 70 00:04:01,590 --> 00:04:04,320 During a billion years of evolution, 71 00:04:04,320 --> 00:04:07,280 fungi became the masters of survival. 72 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:10,270 The fungi have been around so long, 73 00:04:10,270 --> 00:04:12,774 it means they've had a long time 74 00:04:12,774 --> 00:04:14,770 to figure out the best ways to do everything. 75 00:04:16,150 --> 00:04:17,790 The best ways to be lethal, 76 00:04:18,942 --> 00:04:20,770 the best way to kill the things they fight. 77 00:04:22,030 --> 00:04:24,980 You know, they have a billion years of experience 78 00:04:24,980 --> 00:04:26,870 in doing the hard work of living. 79 00:04:30,180 --> 00:04:32,335 We have much to learn 80 00:04:32,335 --> 00:04:34,543 from this mysterious kingdom. 81 00:04:34,543 --> 00:04:35,743 Yet we know less than 1% 82 00:04:36,577 --> 00:04:39,520 of the estimated five million fungi species. 83 00:04:40,660 --> 00:04:43,233 We're still incredibly ignorant 84 00:04:43,233 --> 00:04:44,220 about these organisms. 85 00:04:44,220 --> 00:04:46,230 Every time you breathe in, 86 00:04:46,230 --> 00:04:48,860 you're breathing in hundreds of species of fungi. 87 00:04:48,860 --> 00:04:51,550 And even those fungi we've studied for hundreds of years, 88 00:04:51,550 --> 00:04:52,900 they're really basic things 89 00:04:54,077 --> 00:04:55,300 we don't necessarily know about them. 90 00:04:57,189 --> 00:04:59,930 Microbial explorers Rob Dunn and Anne Madden 91 00:04:59,930 --> 00:05:03,330 are out to discover how fungi can change our lives. 92 00:05:04,790 --> 00:05:07,920 We don't have to go to far off lands or distant places 93 00:05:07,920 --> 00:05:11,990 because there's new species underneath our feet. 94 00:05:12,970 --> 00:05:16,770 With each new species is the promise of a new compound 95 00:05:16,770 --> 00:05:18,970 that could be the next greatest antibiotic, 96 00:05:18,970 --> 00:05:22,120 or a chemical that could cure cancer, 97 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:24,960 or something that we don't even know what it could do yet. 98 00:05:26,030 --> 00:05:29,650 Ah, we've become really interested recently 99 00:05:29,650 --> 00:05:31,410 in trying to figure out 100 00:05:31,410 --> 00:05:34,090 how do we find not just any new fungus, 101 00:05:34,090 --> 00:05:37,120 but fungi that might be useful to people. 102 00:05:37,120 --> 00:05:39,360 And so in some cases that fungi we might use 103 00:05:39,360 --> 00:05:41,110 for making new kinds of beer. 104 00:05:41,110 --> 00:05:43,200 In other cases though, we're looking fungi 105 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:46,020 that might be able to break down industrial waste, 106 00:05:46,020 --> 00:05:49,870 human waste, we'll need fungi to help us deal with that. 107 00:05:51,290 --> 00:05:53,230 Most of the coolest stuff nature can do 108 00:05:53,230 --> 00:05:54,810 we haven't discovered yet. 109 00:05:55,880 --> 00:05:57,900 And so we both systematically look, 110 00:05:57,900 --> 00:06:00,450 and we bumble around a little bit. 111 00:06:00,450 --> 00:06:03,680 It's cool, bark's like a magical thing you lift 112 00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:06,540 and any kind of drama can be playing out underneath it. 113 00:06:06,540 --> 00:06:11,117 It's a microscopic mystery inside a microscopic mystery. 114 00:06:11,117 --> 00:06:13,949 We need some way to guide us 115 00:06:13,949 --> 00:06:16,580 toward understanding all of this mystery. 116 00:06:18,199 --> 00:06:21,293 And so I think evolutionary history 117 00:06:21,293 --> 00:06:23,610 serves as the compass to guide us. 118 00:06:24,515 --> 00:06:26,880 It points us in a direction. 119 00:06:30,690 --> 00:06:33,180 This is the great untold story 120 00:06:33,180 --> 00:06:36,280 of how fungi shaped all life on land. 121 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:39,890 And to understand it, 122 00:06:39,890 --> 00:06:43,450 we need to go way back in evolutionary time. 123 00:06:45,479 --> 00:06:47,852 (ominous boom) 124 00:06:47,852 --> 00:06:50,730 (bright chime) 125 00:06:50,730 --> 00:06:52,390 A billion years ago, 126 00:06:53,372 --> 00:06:55,772 planet earth is waking from a prolonged ice age. 127 00:06:59,199 --> 00:07:02,730 Retreating glaciers reveal a barren landscape. 128 00:07:04,570 --> 00:07:06,560 And yet from this bleakness 129 00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:09,760 will emerge all the abundance of terrestrial life. 130 00:07:13,750 --> 00:07:15,800 In the lava fields of Iceland, 131 00:07:15,800 --> 00:07:18,780 we find evidence of the first colonizers. 132 00:07:20,210 --> 00:07:23,350 I'm really excited to see what's living here 133 00:07:23,350 --> 00:07:24,450 that we're not seeing. 134 00:07:26,086 --> 00:07:28,500 On these rocks there are signs 135 00:07:28,500 --> 00:07:32,660 that microscopic fungi were amongst the pioneers. 136 00:07:32,660 --> 00:07:34,630 About a billion years ago, 137 00:07:34,630 --> 00:07:38,860 terrestrial earth started to be colonized by microbes. 138 00:07:38,860 --> 00:07:41,320 And those microbes included bacteria, 139 00:07:41,320 --> 00:07:45,320 and eventually also fungi in crust like communities. 140 00:07:49,613 --> 00:07:52,410 The first terrestrial fungi survived 141 00:07:52,410 --> 00:07:54,690 by mining minerals from rocks. 142 00:07:55,530 --> 00:07:59,040 They are literally carving out an existence. 143 00:08:00,780 --> 00:08:04,610 When we look at a volcanic landscape like this one, 144 00:08:04,610 --> 00:08:06,260 it's hard to imagine that fungi 145 00:08:06,260 --> 00:08:08,160 have anything to do with the story. 146 00:08:09,150 --> 00:08:10,530 Fungi are fragile, they're mushrooms, 147 00:08:10,530 --> 00:08:13,670 and teeny little microscopic spores. 148 00:08:13,670 --> 00:08:17,170 And yet fungi are precisely at the center of this story 149 00:08:17,170 --> 00:08:20,700 because fungi are what turn a rock like this into soil. 150 00:08:22,690 --> 00:08:25,600 Fungi eat rock. 151 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:28,160 They produce spores that release acid, 152 00:08:28,160 --> 00:08:30,240 breaking up the rock's surface. 153 00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:36,440 Fast growing fungal filaments, hyphae, 154 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:40,180 then drill into the rock to extract a meal of minerals. 155 00:08:41,399 --> 00:08:44,360 Using pressure a hundred times greater 156 00:08:44,360 --> 00:08:46,330 than inside a car tire, 157 00:08:46,330 --> 00:08:49,500 the tips of the hyphae can crush the rock. 158 00:08:49,500 --> 00:08:51,623 What we're looking at here 159 00:08:51,623 --> 00:08:54,320 is a kind of molecular mining operation. 160 00:08:54,320 --> 00:08:55,720 It's this sort of process 161 00:08:55,720 --> 00:08:58,930 through which fungi turn rock to life. 162 00:09:00,410 --> 00:09:02,370 By mineralizing rocks, 163 00:09:02,370 --> 00:09:04,810 fungi will slowly lay the ground work 164 00:09:04,810 --> 00:09:07,340 for the coming of the first plants. 165 00:09:08,740 --> 00:09:12,840 But that next step of colonizing earth was a big one. 166 00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:17,080 Around 500 million years ago, 167 00:09:17,080 --> 00:09:19,810 a group of algae started to move from the ocean 168 00:09:19,810 --> 00:09:22,020 to freshwater ponds on land. 169 00:09:24,630 --> 00:09:26,700 But to take a foothold on ground, 170 00:09:26,700 --> 00:09:28,890 they'd need to make a deal with fungi. 171 00:09:30,180 --> 00:09:31,830 Organisms living in water 172 00:09:32,830 --> 00:09:35,930 are bathed in a solution of nutrients. 173 00:09:36,880 --> 00:09:40,090 When they move to land it's a very different scenario. 174 00:09:40,090 --> 00:09:42,136 So it's very difficult then, 175 00:09:42,136 --> 00:09:44,176 to be able to get ahold of the water 176 00:09:44,176 --> 00:09:46,060 and the nutrients that they need to grow. 177 00:09:46,060 --> 00:09:48,960 One of the major strategies very early on 178 00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:51,760 would've been to link up with this fungi 179 00:09:51,760 --> 00:09:53,480 that were established on land. 180 00:09:56,570 --> 00:09:59,140 Fungi at the time are living on bacteria 181 00:09:59,140 --> 00:10:01,800 and decaying seaweed washed up on the shore. 182 00:10:03,700 --> 00:10:06,440 The arrival of land plants offers fungi 183 00:10:06,440 --> 00:10:09,120 an easier way to access food. 184 00:10:09,120 --> 00:10:12,980 By exploiting a living organism to get sugar out of them 185 00:10:12,980 --> 00:10:17,400 rather than having to excrete their own digestive enzymes 186 00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:19,530 and then assimilate all the nutrients, 187 00:10:19,530 --> 00:10:23,200 that's energetically a lot less expensive for the fungus. 188 00:10:23,200 --> 00:10:25,110 So it makes economical sense. 189 00:10:26,730 --> 00:10:29,000 When algae emerge from lakes, 190 00:10:29,856 --> 00:10:31,156 they're ready for a trade. 191 00:10:33,190 --> 00:10:35,350 They offer the fungi sugars, 192 00:10:35,350 --> 00:10:38,080 and in return receive essential minerals. 193 00:10:39,750 --> 00:10:42,240 This mutually beneficial relationship 194 00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:43,540 is a form of symbiosis. 195 00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:45,850 And it will become 196 00:10:47,040 --> 00:10:49,290 one of the most powerful forces of evolution. 197 00:10:50,358 --> 00:10:51,870 And so when that first algal cell 198 00:10:51,870 --> 00:10:53,920 hits the terrestrial ground, 199 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:56,840 it was already ready to say I'm here, 200 00:10:56,840 --> 00:10:58,640 let's form a relationship. 201 00:11:03,380 --> 00:11:06,010 Microbiologist, Dr. Erik Hom, 202 00:11:06,010 --> 00:11:09,460 has reignited the romance between fungi and algae. 203 00:11:10,500 --> 00:11:13,130 I'm always fascinated, even in human relationships, 204 00:11:13,130 --> 00:11:15,020 who's gonna hit it off and why? 205 00:11:16,182 --> 00:11:19,210 Dr. Hom's experiment shows 206 00:11:19,210 --> 00:11:21,840 that even 500 million years later, 207 00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:24,650 fungi and algae will work together again. 208 00:11:26,270 --> 00:11:27,720 So if I were to ask you 209 00:11:28,603 --> 00:11:29,630 how long do you think these guys 210 00:11:30,787 --> 00:11:34,580 could maybe form a symbiosis together, 211 00:11:34,580 --> 00:11:36,840 what would you say? 212 00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:39,430 It doesn't seem like a forgone conclusion 213 00:11:39,430 --> 00:11:40,550 that they would form a partnership. 214 00:11:41,780 --> 00:11:44,510 Yes, so they can form a partnership, 215 00:11:44,510 --> 00:11:47,541 and this is a result of just seven days. 216 00:11:47,541 --> 00:11:48,590 So not-- Wait, that's (mumbles). 217 00:11:50,056 --> 00:11:51,900 So you put these together right, 218 00:11:51,900 --> 00:11:54,000 that are both just hatin' life, 219 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:56,080 and in seven days you get this? 220 00:11:56,950 --> 00:11:58,110 Yes, they find each other. 221 00:11:58,989 --> 00:11:59,900 And so the fact that these are together 222 00:12:01,245 --> 00:12:02,078 means that the algae 223 00:12:03,141 --> 00:12:03,974 are actually embedded somehow in the ivy? 224 00:12:05,187 --> 00:12:07,893 Yes, they're actually psychically attached. 225 00:12:07,893 --> 00:12:10,198 Like arm and arm. That's awesome. 226 00:12:10,198 --> 00:12:12,125 To me this is pretty fantastic, 227 00:12:12,125 --> 00:12:14,158 and I love the idea that you're remaking this dance 228 00:12:14,158 --> 00:12:17,820 that must've happened, and yeah, there's a beauty in that. 229 00:12:17,820 --> 00:12:20,690 This symbiosis between fungi and algae 230 00:12:20,690 --> 00:12:25,037 will open the way to the evolution of all land plants. 231 00:12:25,037 --> 00:12:28,320 It's the biological big bang. 232 00:12:30,400 --> 00:12:32,240 That first jump was a big one 233 00:12:32,240 --> 00:12:34,720 in the greening of a dark, dark land. 234 00:12:38,472 --> 00:12:41,710 450 million years ago, 235 00:12:41,710 --> 00:12:44,980 the earth is teeming with bizarre lifeforms. 236 00:12:46,100 --> 00:12:49,140 But nearly all of it is still in the ocean. 237 00:12:51,330 --> 00:12:55,400 The land is void of animals, trees, and flowering plants. 238 00:12:56,665 --> 00:13:00,150 Only mosses cushion the lava fields, 239 00:13:00,150 --> 00:13:03,700 and simple plants cling to the edges of streams. 240 00:13:05,140 --> 00:13:07,430 They had no leaves, they had no roots, 241 00:13:07,430 --> 00:13:10,810 and so they were limited to just staying around the water 242 00:13:10,810 --> 00:13:13,760 because they had no way of storing it or transporting it. 243 00:13:15,220 --> 00:13:17,060 Like their algae ancestors, 244 00:13:17,060 --> 00:13:20,300 these early plants will reach out fungi for help. 245 00:13:21,320 --> 00:13:23,950 Those fungi would've been already well established 246 00:13:23,950 --> 00:13:26,020 in the earth at that time, 247 00:13:26,020 --> 00:13:29,790 and they would've been able to go a lot deeper 248 00:13:29,790 --> 00:13:32,663 and get into smaller crevices in the soil 249 00:13:32,663 --> 00:13:35,670 and be able to sort of mine that soil. 250 00:13:38,070 --> 00:13:40,680 Martin Bidartondo studies the interaction 251 00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:45,388 between fungi and the oldest land plants, liverworts. 252 00:13:45,388 --> 00:13:48,930 Imagine that the fungi were making contact 253 00:13:48,930 --> 00:13:53,290 with this plant surfaces, this shallow growing plants. 254 00:13:53,290 --> 00:13:57,350 And they would be growing around them rather than into them. 255 00:13:59,460 --> 00:14:01,900 As fungi explore the liverworts, 256 00:14:01,900 --> 00:14:04,330 they find their way in between plant cells. 257 00:14:06,033 --> 00:14:08,870 Some even manage to break inside. 258 00:14:10,990 --> 00:14:14,740 So the fungi were able to occupy the plants themselves 259 00:14:14,740 --> 00:14:16,950 and form these beautiful tree like structures 260 00:14:16,950 --> 00:14:18,780 which we call arbusculars, 261 00:14:18,780 --> 00:14:21,360 and it's through these arbusculars that the plants 262 00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:24,390 are able to take phosphorous from the fungus, 263 00:14:24,390 --> 00:14:27,910 and in return the plant gives the fungus carbon 264 00:14:27,910 --> 00:14:30,300 that its generated through photosynthesis. 265 00:14:33,108 --> 00:14:35,820 Katie Field can recreate the atmosphere 266 00:14:35,820 --> 00:14:38,670 of 450 million years ago 267 00:14:38,670 --> 00:14:41,810 when fungi and liverworts began cooperating. 268 00:14:45,340 --> 00:14:48,110 So what we've done is we've ramped the CO2 right up 269 00:14:48,110 --> 00:14:51,350 to around three times its level in the current atmosphere. 270 00:14:51,350 --> 00:14:53,673 So I'll just have a quick look 271 00:14:53,673 --> 00:14:55,040 and see how the liverworts are doing in there. 272 00:14:56,900 --> 00:14:58,970 So this is one of my favorite liverworts, 273 00:14:58,970 --> 00:15:00,830 this is trabial lacunosa, 274 00:15:00,830 --> 00:15:03,842 and it's actually the most ancient land plant 275 00:15:03,842 --> 00:15:04,675 on earth today, 276 00:15:05,667 --> 00:15:07,516 and it's probably really similar 277 00:15:07,516 --> 00:15:09,463 to how the very first land plants were 278 00:15:09,463 --> 00:15:11,523 back 400 million years ago. 279 00:15:11,523 --> 00:15:12,356 And as you can see, it's doing really well 280 00:15:13,468 --> 00:15:14,940 under those high CO2 concentrations in this cabinet, 281 00:15:15,796 --> 00:15:18,007 which suggest that the fungi is doing it's job 282 00:15:18,007 --> 00:15:20,388 and it's supplying it with nutrients from the soil, 283 00:15:20,388 --> 00:15:23,308 and the plant's doing really well because of that. 284 00:15:23,308 --> 00:15:24,141 By working with fungi, 285 00:15:25,016 --> 00:15:27,066 liverworts not only survive, they thrive. 286 00:15:28,084 --> 00:15:31,517 Sucking up carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen, 287 00:15:31,517 --> 00:15:34,330 these tiny plants are giving the planet 288 00:15:34,330 --> 00:15:37,952 its first breathe of fresh air, and over time, 289 00:15:37,952 --> 00:15:41,501 they change the composition of the entire atmosphere, 290 00:15:41,501 --> 00:15:46,210 paving the way for the emergence of complex plants. 291 00:15:46,210 --> 00:15:49,617 And so you end up with these much larger plants evolving 292 00:15:49,617 --> 00:15:51,780 which have leaves, 293 00:15:51,780 --> 00:15:53,680 stomata, which are able to control 294 00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:56,760 the CO2 movement into the leaves. 295 00:15:56,760 --> 00:15:57,640 And roots, 296 00:15:59,024 --> 00:16:02,000 which allow the plants to grow really big up above ground. 297 00:16:03,790 --> 00:16:05,160 And ever since, 298 00:16:05,160 --> 00:16:07,510 nearly every plant has been nurtured 299 00:16:07,510 --> 00:16:09,160 by their symbiotic fungi. 300 00:16:10,610 --> 00:16:13,140 I am still captivated by this whole idea 301 00:16:13,140 --> 00:16:16,654 of a plant that is alive, that is healthy, 302 00:16:16,654 --> 00:16:19,720 and that it's allowing another organism 303 00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:23,760 to grow in between its cells and into its cells, 304 00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:26,610 and that not only is it allowing them to do that, 305 00:16:26,610 --> 00:16:29,240 but it's actually deriving a benefit from it. 306 00:16:29,240 --> 00:16:31,940 Well ultimately, fungi help plants move away 307 00:16:31,940 --> 00:16:34,097 from being these marginal, 308 00:16:34,097 --> 00:16:35,670 tiny little things on the water's edge 309 00:16:35,670 --> 00:16:38,910 into large forests and entire ecosystems. 310 00:16:46,778 --> 00:16:49,840 If fungi had not evolved, it would be a very, 311 00:16:49,840 --> 00:16:52,900 very radically different looking kind of planet. 312 00:16:52,900 --> 00:16:54,400 We certainly wouldn't be here. 313 00:16:59,570 --> 00:17:02,440 Long before the first forests arrive, 314 00:17:02,440 --> 00:17:05,660 it's fungi that rule the world. 315 00:17:05,660 --> 00:17:10,660 For 50 million years, giant organisms called prototaxites, 316 00:17:10,750 --> 00:17:14,600 tower up to eight meters above the landscape. 317 00:17:14,600 --> 00:17:17,270 So strange and inexplicable. 318 00:17:17,270 --> 00:17:20,320 Scientists have argued about them for a century. 319 00:17:21,310 --> 00:17:24,173 Prototaxites is identified as a fossil wood. 320 00:17:24,173 --> 00:17:26,150 And I thought, I looked at the tissue myself, 321 00:17:26,150 --> 00:17:28,760 I said that can't possibly be. 322 00:17:28,760 --> 00:17:32,110 So got intrigued, well let's find out what it is. 323 00:17:32,110 --> 00:17:33,840 And there was nothing that you could compare 324 00:17:33,840 --> 00:17:35,890 to any modern wood. 325 00:17:35,890 --> 00:17:38,150 And so well, the other next thing, well, 326 00:17:38,150 --> 00:17:40,630 maybe it is a fungus, and I'll check that out 327 00:17:40,630 --> 00:17:44,704 with present day woody fungi, bracket fungi. 328 00:17:44,704 --> 00:17:47,600 They are very woody and they're very hard. 329 00:17:47,600 --> 00:17:49,460 Material that's been weathered in the dessert. 330 00:17:49,460 --> 00:17:52,390 Dr. Francis Hueber has spent a lifetime 331 00:17:52,390 --> 00:17:55,150 trying to make sense of these enigmatic fossils. 332 00:17:56,052 --> 00:17:57,660 Well you see this kind of structure, 333 00:17:57,660 --> 00:17:59,450 it's definitely not wood. 334 00:17:59,450 --> 00:18:01,500 These are hyphae, these are tubes. 335 00:18:01,500 --> 00:18:04,300 And this is typical in what you see in the fungus today 336 00:18:04,300 --> 00:18:07,250 when you make a section of a bracket fungus. 337 00:18:07,250 --> 00:18:09,350 You see very much a similar arrangement 338 00:18:09,350 --> 00:18:12,140 of various size tube elements. 339 00:18:14,411 --> 00:18:17,410 These massive mushrooms 340 00:18:17,410 --> 00:18:19,560 spread to every continent. 341 00:18:21,660 --> 00:18:25,029 They had no rivals until insects appeared 342 00:18:25,029 --> 00:18:28,190 and begun eating them from the ground up. 343 00:18:30,612 --> 00:18:33,106 I just sort of jokingly say, 344 00:18:33,106 --> 00:18:37,327 well prototaxites got tired of being fed upon on the ground, 345 00:18:37,327 --> 00:18:40,680 and it climbed a tree, and became a bracket fungus. 346 00:18:42,150 --> 00:18:45,490 These strange fossils are all that's left. 347 00:18:45,490 --> 00:18:49,180 A reminder of evolution's bizarre experiments. 348 00:18:51,154 --> 00:18:53,880 (dinosaurs roaring) 349 00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:56,240 In the golden age of the dinosaurs, 350 00:18:56,240 --> 00:18:59,410 the planet is exploding with life. 351 00:18:59,410 --> 00:19:02,800 Tree ferns and conifers dot the landscape, 352 00:19:02,800 --> 00:19:05,180 but it's fungi beneath the ground 353 00:19:05,180 --> 00:19:07,970 that's making this all possible. 354 00:19:07,970 --> 00:19:09,780 Fungi are the kind of classic 355 00:19:09,780 --> 00:19:12,670 out of sight out of mind type of organisms, 356 00:19:12,670 --> 00:19:14,440 but if you take a step back, 357 00:19:14,440 --> 00:19:16,300 the fungi are really the organisms 358 00:19:16,300 --> 00:19:18,100 that are putting those plants there. 359 00:19:20,100 --> 00:19:21,780 With the coming of trees, 360 00:19:21,780 --> 00:19:24,675 new type of fungi evolve. 361 00:19:24,675 --> 00:19:28,005 They'll forge partnerships with the roots of trees, 362 00:19:28,005 --> 00:19:30,970 and give rise to entire forests. 363 00:19:32,599 --> 00:19:35,908 (mumbles) is a fungi that are able to do something 364 00:19:35,908 --> 00:19:40,080 quite different in the soil than what the early fungi 365 00:19:40,080 --> 00:19:42,580 that were involved in allowing plants 366 00:19:42,580 --> 00:19:44,780 to colonize land could do. 367 00:19:47,270 --> 00:19:49,490 Above ground, these new fungi 368 00:19:49,490 --> 00:19:53,320 are marked by their fruiting bodies, mushrooms. 369 00:19:54,379 --> 00:19:58,417 Beneath the surface they form complex networks. 370 00:19:58,417 --> 00:20:02,290 Scientists call it the wood wide web. 371 00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:07,550 In fact, there are two sorts of wood wide web. 372 00:20:07,550 --> 00:20:10,700 One sort is formed by the decompose of fungi, 373 00:20:10,700 --> 00:20:14,170 the rotters that break down dead plant material, 374 00:20:14,170 --> 00:20:15,320 and they interconnect 375 00:20:15,320 --> 00:20:19,050 between lots of different dead resources. 376 00:20:21,450 --> 00:20:23,570 Without these decomposers, 377 00:20:23,570 --> 00:20:27,510 life in the forest would soon be buried under dead stuff. 378 00:20:28,590 --> 00:20:33,590 Fungi eat death, and in doing so, they create life. 379 00:20:36,800 --> 00:20:40,550 They're the garbage disposal agents of the natural world. 380 00:20:40,550 --> 00:20:43,110 They break down dead, organic matter, 381 00:20:43,110 --> 00:20:45,420 and by doing that they release nutrients, 382 00:20:45,420 --> 00:20:47,940 and those nutrients then made available 383 00:20:47,940 --> 00:20:49,420 for plants to carry on growing. 384 00:20:49,420 --> 00:20:51,310 Otherwise all the nutrients on the planet 385 00:20:51,310 --> 00:20:53,200 would be locked up in dead stuff. 386 00:20:56,090 --> 00:20:59,060 Fungi are taking all of that dead stuff 387 00:20:59,060 --> 00:21:01,240 and giving it back to life. 388 00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:03,630 It's how everything is reborn, 389 00:21:03,630 --> 00:21:06,439 so that this entire web of life is connected, 390 00:21:06,439 --> 00:21:08,630 and it's connected through the fungi. 391 00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:14,720 The second type of wood wide web 392 00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:18,930 is formed between living plants, especially trees. 393 00:21:21,840 --> 00:21:25,350 Hungry for food, fungal filaments called hyphae 394 00:21:25,350 --> 00:21:27,270 are searching for tree roots. 395 00:21:28,490 --> 00:21:32,700 They envelope the root, and some find their way inside. 396 00:21:32,700 --> 00:21:34,930 Here, they'll provide water and minerals 397 00:21:34,930 --> 00:21:36,100 in exchange for sugars. 398 00:21:37,860 --> 00:21:40,190 But this is more than a trade. 399 00:21:40,190 --> 00:21:43,680 The entire forest is now connected through the fungi. 400 00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:47,994 If you summed up the distance traveled by the hyphae 401 00:21:47,994 --> 00:21:50,564 just beneath a single foot, 402 00:21:50,564 --> 00:21:55,525 it would be more than 500 kilometers of hyphae. 403 00:21:55,525 --> 00:21:58,240 A vast network that traffics 404 00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:00,300 in everything that forests need. 405 00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:08,930 This is nature's internet. 406 00:22:08,930 --> 00:22:12,204 An information highway that allows trees to communicate 407 00:22:12,204 --> 00:22:15,960 and even send out danger signals to each other. 408 00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:23,353 It's as if the forest isn't made of individual trees, 409 00:22:23,353 --> 00:22:26,720 but is operating as a super organism. 410 00:22:36,020 --> 00:22:38,490 Connected by the fungal network, 411 00:22:38,490 --> 00:22:41,530 a lush and vibrant planet emerges. 412 00:22:43,450 --> 00:22:46,550 But hundreds of millions of years of evolution 413 00:22:46,550 --> 00:22:50,654 is about to be swept away in a single moment. 414 00:22:50,654 --> 00:22:52,987 (explosion) 415 00:22:53,900 --> 00:22:58,890 This asteroid strike will wipe out 70% of all species. 416 00:23:00,700 --> 00:23:04,150 Yet fungi, nature's ultimate survivor, 417 00:23:04,150 --> 00:23:07,130 will turn the cataclysm to it's advantage. 418 00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:10,990 The earth became a fungal compost. 419 00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:12,900 Think about it. 420 00:23:14,032 --> 00:23:15,900 Overnight you have this catastrophe. 421 00:23:15,900 --> 00:23:18,600 Dust is kicked up, there is no sunlight. 422 00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,200 And you have all this decaying plant matter. 423 00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:26,420 The fungi then can reproduce very rapidly. 424 00:23:28,810 --> 00:23:30,780 In this expansive death, 425 00:23:30,780 --> 00:23:32,920 fungi inherit the earth. 426 00:23:33,870 --> 00:23:36,680 And incredibly, without this catastrophe, 427 00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:38,180 we wouldn't be here. 428 00:23:39,230 --> 00:23:41,750 An otherwise insignificant animal group, 429 00:23:41,750 --> 00:23:45,690 the mammals from whom we will evolve, survive. 430 00:23:45,690 --> 00:23:49,020 They are immune to fungi's lethal embrace. 431 00:23:49,020 --> 00:23:52,010 Mammals have one built in advantage 432 00:23:52,010 --> 00:23:54,130 relative to the reptiles. 433 00:23:54,130 --> 00:23:54,963 They're hot. 434 00:23:56,580 --> 00:23:59,770 The reptiles are quite susceptible to fungal diseases, 435 00:23:59,770 --> 00:24:01,070 but your typical mammal, 436 00:24:01,070 --> 00:24:04,764 which maintains a temperature in the mid 30s or so, 437 00:24:04,764 --> 00:24:09,160 creates a thermal exclusionary zone for fungi. 438 00:24:12,060 --> 00:24:15,270 It's an intriguing theory, and if correct, 439 00:24:15,270 --> 00:24:17,830 the temperatures of warm blooded animals 440 00:24:17,830 --> 00:24:21,070 would be above the temperature tolerated by most fungi. 441 00:24:22,093 --> 00:24:26,000 Casadevall's team set out to test the hypothesis. 442 00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:30,390 So after two days in culture at either 25 degrees, 443 00:24:30,390 --> 00:24:32,720 which is ambient room temperature, 444 00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:35,470 or 37, degrees which is human body temperature, 445 00:24:35,470 --> 00:24:37,790 we can see that there are differences in growth. 446 00:24:37,790 --> 00:24:40,800 So on the 25 degree plate, 447 00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,400 we can see all four of these strains grew. 448 00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,380 But on our 37 degree plate, 449 00:24:45,380 --> 00:24:49,520 we can see two of those fungi haven't grown at all. 450 00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:52,802 And that's because they don't survive at 37, 451 00:24:52,802 --> 00:24:55,400 and it happens to be that those are the same ones 452 00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:56,960 that cannot infect people. 453 00:24:59,676 --> 00:25:01,530 The narrow margin 454 00:25:01,530 --> 00:25:03,660 protecting us from fungal pathogens 455 00:25:03,660 --> 00:25:06,930 is the difference between life and death. 456 00:25:06,930 --> 00:25:09,530 In America, millions of little bats are dying 457 00:25:09,530 --> 00:25:11,310 from a newly arrived fungus. 458 00:25:12,234 --> 00:25:15,540 Bats are like us, warm blooded. 459 00:25:15,540 --> 00:25:19,125 However, the bats hibernate in the winter, 460 00:25:19,125 --> 00:25:21,290 and when their temperature drops, 461 00:25:21,290 --> 00:25:23,930 they become selectable to this fungal disease. 462 00:25:25,950 --> 00:25:27,310 Here is the interesting thing. 463 00:25:27,310 --> 00:25:30,170 If you take the bats when they're infected, 464 00:25:30,170 --> 00:25:32,400 and you feed them, wake them up, 465 00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:33,850 and let their temperatures go up, 466 00:25:33,850 --> 00:25:36,380 they're able to control the fungal disease. 467 00:25:37,513 --> 00:25:39,530 But when they're cold, 468 00:25:39,530 --> 00:25:42,050 their immune system cannot do it by itself. 469 00:25:42,050 --> 00:25:45,301 The warm bloodedness of mammals, including ourselves, 470 00:25:45,301 --> 00:25:48,054 has evolved in part as a response 471 00:25:48,054 --> 00:25:50,540 to the pressure from fungus. 472 00:25:50,540 --> 00:25:53,720 And so we seem to have cooked out the fungal pathogens. 473 00:25:56,560 --> 00:25:58,990 Protected by their high temperature, 474 00:25:58,990 --> 00:26:02,440 mammals were free to roam the fungi dominated world. 475 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:12,100 10 million years ago, the climate became warm and dry. 476 00:26:13,083 --> 00:26:15,650 Forests gave way to grasslands, 477 00:26:15,650 --> 00:26:18,940 and our ancestors began to explore life on the ground. 478 00:26:20,103 --> 00:26:24,610 Their fate would be altered by the simplest of fungi, yeast. 479 00:26:25,540 --> 00:26:29,620 In the trees you find lots of fruit that is unfermented. 480 00:26:29,620 --> 00:26:32,210 But when it gets old and falls to the ground, 481 00:26:32,210 --> 00:26:35,200 it can get damaged, yeast can get into the fruit, 482 00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:37,860 and then they can start fighting a war with the bacteria, 483 00:26:37,860 --> 00:26:38,780 and how do they fight that? 484 00:26:38,780 --> 00:26:40,430 They make ethanol. 485 00:26:40,430 --> 00:26:42,920 So if you're adapting to life on the ground, 486 00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,538 you're more likely to encounter fermented fruit 487 00:26:45,538 --> 00:26:47,870 than you are unfermented fruit. 488 00:26:50,830 --> 00:26:52,890 But eating alcohol laden fruit 489 00:26:52,890 --> 00:26:54,860 when you are surrounded by predators, 490 00:26:54,860 --> 00:26:56,240 isn't a great idea. 491 00:26:57,090 --> 00:26:59,240 If you do eat that fermented fruit, 492 00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:01,504 and you cannot metabolism the ethanol, 493 00:27:01,504 --> 00:27:03,754 you get inebriated, you get intoxicated, 494 00:27:03,754 --> 00:27:06,440 and is this a good survival strategy 495 00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:08,540 when you're wandering around the forests 496 00:27:08,540 --> 00:27:11,857 surrounded by predators or competing with other animals? 497 00:27:11,857 --> 00:27:13,540 Probably not. 498 00:27:15,410 --> 00:27:18,050 Biologist Matthew Carrigan discovered 499 00:27:18,050 --> 00:27:22,120 that our early ancestors were able to break down alcohol. 500 00:27:22,120 --> 00:27:24,950 What we know from some of the enzyme's that we've studied 501 00:27:24,950 --> 00:27:28,367 is that our ancestors with these guys and with gorillas, 502 00:27:28,367 --> 00:27:30,990 we got a mutation that allowed us 503 00:27:30,990 --> 00:27:34,200 to metabolize ethanol really well. 504 00:27:36,030 --> 00:27:38,520 And in a world where food is scarce, 505 00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,720 that can be difference between life and death. 506 00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:43,350 If there's no other things to eat, 507 00:27:43,350 --> 00:27:47,440 then having ethanol in fruit is better than starving. 508 00:27:48,900 --> 00:27:51,550 And those ancestors that could tolerate alcohol 509 00:27:51,550 --> 00:27:53,720 had a better chance to survive, 510 00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:56,070 and eventually to evolve into us. 511 00:27:57,260 --> 00:28:00,400 What we've evolved is to consume ethanol 512 00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:04,360 and not get intoxicated, not get legally drunk. 513 00:28:05,430 --> 00:28:06,263 Cheers! 514 00:28:09,550 --> 00:28:11,990 Yeah, yeast, gotta love 'em. 515 00:28:14,219 --> 00:28:16,510 A single mutation 516 00:28:16,510 --> 00:28:18,710 in our deep evolutionary past 517 00:28:18,710 --> 00:28:22,089 paved the way to one of our favorite pastimes. 518 00:28:22,089 --> 00:28:24,380 And since that moment, 519 00:28:24,380 --> 00:28:28,500 our history has been intertwined with yeast. 520 00:28:28,500 --> 00:28:31,030 If you think about the transition in human history 521 00:28:31,030 --> 00:28:33,000 from being a hunter gatherer 522 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,820 to being an agricultural society to being an empire, 523 00:28:36,820 --> 00:28:39,800 and so key to that transition would be fungi. 524 00:28:41,854 --> 00:28:46,406 Farming sowed the seeds for modern society. 525 00:28:46,406 --> 00:28:50,955 Civilization began because of agriculture. 526 00:28:50,955 --> 00:28:55,082 We thought these grains were grown to bake bread, 527 00:28:55,082 --> 00:28:58,600 but what if they were harvested to brew beer? 528 00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:01,570 There's actually evidence suggesting that yes, 529 00:29:01,570 --> 00:29:05,334 the very grains that were chosen in those early days 530 00:29:05,334 --> 00:29:08,254 included grains that were really the very best 531 00:29:08,254 --> 00:29:11,430 not for bread but instead for beer. 532 00:29:13,020 --> 00:29:14,960 Both baking and brewing 533 00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:17,660 rely on yeast for fermentation, 534 00:29:17,660 --> 00:29:20,600 but brewing beer has the added advantage 535 00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,830 of sterilizing against bacteria. 536 00:29:23,830 --> 00:29:26,750 In those early gatherings of humans, 537 00:29:26,750 --> 00:29:28,500 we pooped on everything. 538 00:29:28,500 --> 00:29:31,377 The danger of getting infected and sick was very high, 539 00:29:31,377 --> 00:29:33,050 and it was especially higher 540 00:29:33,050 --> 00:29:34,760 from the liquids that you would drink. 541 00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:36,140 And so in that context, 542 00:29:37,008 --> 00:29:38,928 fermented drinks might've actually increased 543 00:29:38,928 --> 00:29:40,578 our ability to survive ourselves. 544 00:29:42,130 --> 00:29:44,090 We've built our civilization 545 00:29:44,090 --> 00:29:47,509 around a single, microscopic fungus. 546 00:29:47,509 --> 00:29:49,550 For 10 thousand years, 547 00:29:49,550 --> 00:29:52,560 every glass of beer and every loaf of bread 548 00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:56,040 has been made with the very same yeast. 549 00:29:58,150 --> 00:30:01,720 Anne Madden and Rob Dunn set out to change that. 550 00:30:03,010 --> 00:30:07,550 There are many more yeast species that exist in our world. 551 00:30:07,550 --> 00:30:11,432 And so our idea was, maybe we could go to these wild yeasts 552 00:30:11,432 --> 00:30:15,770 and see if they produced different, new, and valuable beers. 553 00:30:16,660 --> 00:30:19,270 In one of the places we decided to first search 554 00:30:19,270 --> 00:30:22,690 were the bodies of social wasps. 555 00:30:22,690 --> 00:30:24,880 As wasps pollinate flowers, 556 00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:26,860 they incidentally pick up yeast 557 00:30:26,860 --> 00:30:28,520 that are feasting on the nectar. 558 00:30:29,500 --> 00:30:31,930 So we knew that wasps are a reservoir 559 00:30:31,930 --> 00:30:34,030 of yeast in the environment, 560 00:30:34,030 --> 00:30:38,680 and we went to explore and wrangle yeast from these wasps. 561 00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:40,190 We grabbed a species of yeast 562 00:30:40,190 --> 00:30:42,600 that hasn't ever been worked with for brewing. 563 00:30:44,700 --> 00:30:46,930 So here we have four different yeasts 564 00:30:46,930 --> 00:30:50,100 that came from the different arthropods we were looking at. 565 00:30:50,100 --> 00:30:53,870 And you can see that the yeasts look quite different. 566 00:30:53,870 --> 00:30:56,620 They've got different pigments produced. 567 00:30:59,950 --> 00:31:01,750 And they all have a different smell. 568 00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:04,890 So you get kind of a fruity note in that one. 569 00:31:05,912 --> 00:31:06,950 Whoa. 570 00:31:06,950 --> 00:31:09,911 Yeah, and that's likely gonna come through in the beer, 571 00:31:09,911 --> 00:31:12,320 so we wanna keep that in mind when you look through them. 572 00:31:12,320 --> 00:31:14,810 Now most yeasts can't produce alcohol, 573 00:31:14,810 --> 00:31:16,440 and if they can produce alcohol, 574 00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:19,343 they produce horrible flavors. 575 00:31:19,343 --> 00:31:21,551 (laughs) So not that one? 576 00:31:21,551 --> 00:31:23,812 That wasn't fair, that was a trick! 577 00:31:23,812 --> 00:31:25,150 So we had very low chances of success, 578 00:31:25,150 --> 00:31:26,510 but we found a few yeasts 579 00:31:27,650 --> 00:31:29,110 with this remarkable ability to produce alcohol. 580 00:31:29,110 --> 00:31:31,610 So I sent them off to our brewer 581 00:31:31,610 --> 00:31:33,770 and didn't really expect to hear much back. 582 00:31:33,770 --> 00:31:37,193 This was a long shot of a chance in science. 583 00:31:37,193 --> 00:31:40,730 But then a few weeks later I get an email, and it's John. 584 00:31:40,730 --> 00:31:43,510 And he says, the yeast made beer. 585 00:31:43,510 --> 00:31:44,350 That's right, 586 00:31:44,350 --> 00:31:47,495 the yeast that was originated from the wasp body 587 00:31:47,495 --> 00:31:50,720 is now making our beer for us, and you're about to drink it. 588 00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:52,170 I don't know how I feel about that. 589 00:31:52,170 --> 00:31:55,020 Should I feel good? Well, try it. 590 00:31:55,020 --> 00:31:56,220 All right, here we go. 591 00:32:01,010 --> 00:32:01,980 Well that's quite good. 592 00:32:01,980 --> 00:32:04,060 You like that? Yeah! 593 00:32:04,060 --> 00:32:07,400 Wasp being delicious and a little bit fungal too, 594 00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:08,233 I like it. 595 00:32:11,984 --> 00:32:16,130 Fungi have given us more than beer and bread. 596 00:32:16,130 --> 00:32:20,840 Our ancestors long recognized them as life savers. 597 00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:24,320 5,000 years ago this beautiful area here 598 00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:28,890 in the Italian Alps was already settled by people. 599 00:32:28,890 --> 00:32:31,744 And this man was going on his journey, 600 00:32:31,744 --> 00:32:34,588 packed with a lot of equipment, 601 00:32:34,588 --> 00:32:38,040 but he would never return home, unfortunately. 602 00:32:40,707 --> 00:32:44,778 This is Ötzi, the Iceman. 603 00:32:44,778 --> 00:32:47,850 A victim of a neolithic murder. 604 00:32:50,309 --> 00:32:53,380 His body was perfectly preserved in the ice 605 00:32:53,380 --> 00:32:55,430 for thousands of years, 606 00:32:55,430 --> 00:32:59,860 and amongst his belongings were some intriguing items. 607 00:32:59,860 --> 00:33:01,901 There were two objects 608 00:33:01,901 --> 00:33:04,810 which were a big mystery in the beginning. 609 00:33:04,810 --> 00:33:08,325 They've turned later out to be fungi, polypores. 610 00:33:08,325 --> 00:33:10,660 We were thinking, could it be food? 611 00:33:10,660 --> 00:33:13,780 But he would not put a lot of work in food 612 00:33:13,780 --> 00:33:15,370 to make it so nicely ramented. 613 00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,730 Dr. Ursula Peintner is one of the scientists 614 00:33:22,730 --> 00:33:24,980 who studied these mushrooms. 615 00:33:24,980 --> 00:33:28,979 The evidence suggests they were much more than decoration. 616 00:33:28,979 --> 00:33:33,604 Now we know that it's enhancing your immune system 617 00:33:33,604 --> 00:33:37,401 and it will help you also against cancer, 618 00:33:37,401 --> 00:33:42,401 against inflammations, antiviral, it's antibacterial, 619 00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:46,710 so it has a huge array of medicinal properties. 620 00:33:47,674 --> 00:33:51,160 Ötzi's bracket fungi are the first recorded use 621 00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,640 of mushrooms as medicine, 622 00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:56,730 but for the Iceman it meant even more. 623 00:33:56,730 --> 00:33:59,790 It was a talisman, it was spiritual. 624 00:33:59,790 --> 00:34:02,347 Like bringing the spirit of God with you 625 00:34:02,347 --> 00:34:04,910 to protect you on your journey. 626 00:34:09,155 --> 00:34:12,954 (church bells ringing) 627 00:34:12,954 --> 00:34:14,870 In western culture, 628 00:34:14,870 --> 00:34:18,900 the power of mushrooms will soon be forgotten. 629 00:34:18,900 --> 00:34:21,780 And it's only an accident that revives it. 630 00:34:23,870 --> 00:34:27,420 In 1928, fungal spores blow through the window 631 00:34:27,420 --> 00:34:29,260 of a London hospital. 632 00:34:29,260 --> 00:34:31,010 They land in a Petri dish 633 00:34:31,010 --> 00:34:33,570 in the laboratory of Alexander Fleming. 634 00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:39,690 This fungus, called penicillium, will change human history. 635 00:34:39,690 --> 00:34:42,390 He looked at one of these unusual Petri dishes, 636 00:34:42,390 --> 00:34:46,570 and at that interface between the bacteria and the fungi 637 00:34:46,570 --> 00:34:49,687 was a zone where nothing was growing. 638 00:34:49,687 --> 00:34:52,190 What he would come to realize was 639 00:34:52,190 --> 00:34:55,690 that was the zone where the fungi were producing enzymes, 640 00:34:55,690 --> 00:34:59,840 chemicals, that were outside of the body of the fungus 641 00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:02,090 and killing the bacteria. 642 00:35:02,090 --> 00:35:05,510 And that's the germ of the discovery of antibiotics. 643 00:35:07,299 --> 00:35:09,380 For most of history, 644 00:35:09,380 --> 00:35:13,270 humanity was decimated by bacterial epidemics. 645 00:35:14,670 --> 00:35:17,626 But since the first penicillin pill, 646 00:35:17,626 --> 00:35:20,172 world population has tripled 647 00:35:20,172 --> 00:35:23,363 and allowed us to build vast cities 648 00:35:23,363 --> 00:35:27,210 changing the face of the planet. 649 00:35:28,350 --> 00:35:30,780 We're expected to add another two billion people 650 00:35:30,780 --> 00:35:32,960 to the planet, we'll need more food. 651 00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,740 With that number of people we'll need more antibiotics. 652 00:35:36,740 --> 00:35:38,960 And so we're going to need to depend on fungi 653 00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:40,470 more than we do today. 654 00:35:42,850 --> 00:35:45,830 The life saving power of antibiotics 655 00:35:45,830 --> 00:35:48,520 is the outcome of an ancient war. 656 00:35:50,140 --> 00:35:54,840 Fungi and bacteria are sworn enemies. 657 00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,660 Wherever fungi grow and they encounter bacteria, 658 00:35:57,660 --> 00:35:59,990 and over millions and millions of years, 659 00:35:59,990 --> 00:36:03,300 they've evolved mechanisms to kill those bacteria. 660 00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:09,740 Fungi are absolutely remarkable chemists. 661 00:36:09,740 --> 00:36:13,730 They make molecules that are almost impossible, 662 00:36:13,730 --> 00:36:15,853 frankly are impossible, 663 00:36:15,853 --> 00:36:17,903 for us to replicate in the lab right now. 664 00:36:19,430 --> 00:36:22,800 But bacteria are constantly evolving. 665 00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:26,164 And as a result, we are now facing a global crisis 666 00:36:26,164 --> 00:36:29,330 of antibiotic resistance. 667 00:36:29,330 --> 00:36:31,410 Unless we find a solution, 668 00:36:31,410 --> 00:36:34,161 hundreds of millions will die. 669 00:36:34,161 --> 00:36:36,240 The challenge is we don't have any new drugs. 670 00:36:36,240 --> 00:36:38,290 And what we need to do 671 00:36:38,290 --> 00:36:41,170 is find new ways to overcome this problem. 672 00:36:43,850 --> 00:36:46,740 Microbiologist Gerry Wright wondered 673 00:36:46,740 --> 00:36:51,014 if fungi had evolved ways of beating bacterial resistance. 674 00:36:51,014 --> 00:36:54,353 And that meant returning to the soil 675 00:36:54,353 --> 00:36:56,380 looking for a compound 676 00:36:56,380 --> 00:36:59,330 that might help to safeguard our antibiotics. 677 00:37:01,780 --> 00:37:04,038 Hey guys, got some more dirt for you. 678 00:37:04,038 --> 00:37:06,185 It came from the back of the university. 679 00:37:06,185 --> 00:37:07,500 Thank you. 680 00:37:07,500 --> 00:37:09,531 See if you can't get anything cool out of it. 681 00:37:09,531 --> 00:37:10,364 Okay, sounds good. 682 00:37:12,580 --> 00:37:16,409 We screened 10,000 extracts that we had collected 683 00:37:16,409 --> 00:37:20,911 from microorganisms around various environments, 684 00:37:20,911 --> 00:37:22,927 and from that 10,000 extracts, 685 00:37:22,927 --> 00:37:26,410 we found one that had excellent activity 686 00:37:26,410 --> 00:37:28,620 at overcoming resistance. 687 00:37:30,060 --> 00:37:31,974 We call it AMA for short, 688 00:37:31,974 --> 00:37:34,340 cause aspergillomycosis is too much to say every day. 689 00:37:35,639 --> 00:37:39,060 Incredibly, this compound produced 690 00:37:39,060 --> 00:37:41,899 by a common soil fungus, aspergillus, 691 00:37:41,899 --> 00:37:46,150 restored the power of our antibiotics. 692 00:37:46,150 --> 00:37:48,526 When I saw the result, I honestly didn't believe it. 693 00:37:48,526 --> 00:37:53,526 It just seemed relatively too easy to do. 694 00:37:53,865 --> 00:37:57,913 But it turned out to be real, so every week, every month, 695 00:37:57,913 --> 00:38:01,370 as we continue to work on this compound and kept saying, 696 00:38:01,370 --> 00:38:03,670 well, can it be used for pneumonia, 697 00:38:03,670 --> 00:38:06,002 or can it be used for this kind of an infection, 698 00:38:06,002 --> 00:38:08,725 every time we did an experiment like this 699 00:38:08,725 --> 00:38:13,725 it was proving to be really effective. 700 00:38:13,927 --> 00:38:16,620 When these fungal molecules 701 00:38:16,620 --> 00:38:19,010 were added to antibiotics, 702 00:38:19,010 --> 00:38:23,280 even the most resistant superbugs were defeated. 703 00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:25,100 I've been working in this field for 25 years, 704 00:38:25,100 --> 00:38:28,562 we've never had any molecule that's shown to be that potent 705 00:38:28,562 --> 00:38:30,900 and that's insanely exciting. 706 00:38:34,150 --> 00:38:35,800 The kingdom of fungi 707 00:38:36,695 --> 00:38:38,095 is nature's chemical factory 708 00:38:39,502 --> 00:38:43,380 offering immense benefits to humanity. 709 00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:48,030 Already, half of our 20 most valuable medicines 710 00:38:48,030 --> 00:38:51,259 are derived from fungi, including immunosuppressants 711 00:38:51,259 --> 00:38:53,740 and cholesterol lowering statins. 712 00:38:55,008 --> 00:38:57,440 Many of the new drugs we're thinking about 713 00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:00,330 are coming from fungi, and so in your every day life, 714 00:39:00,330 --> 00:39:04,280 they're this magic set of compounds that we rely on. 715 00:39:06,250 --> 00:39:08,910 Scientists are now investigating the benefits 716 00:39:08,910 --> 00:39:11,857 of a wide range of mushrooms for their antiinflammatory, 717 00:39:11,857 --> 00:39:16,857 anticancer, antioxidant, and immune stimulant properties. 718 00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:20,040 A challenging thing as a scientist 719 00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:22,000 is trying to understand why they're doing it 720 00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:24,230 and we do tap into that 721 00:39:24,230 --> 00:39:27,850 and actually enhance our chances of finding what we want. 722 00:39:30,900 --> 00:39:33,520 With millions of potential candidates, 723 00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:37,570 the search for beneficial fungi needs clever detective work. 724 00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,610 The great thing is they're a bunch of insects 725 00:39:41,610 --> 00:39:43,760 that we know probably have useful fungi, 726 00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:45,290 but then there are lots of other insects 727 00:39:45,290 --> 00:39:48,990 that nobody's ever studied in the context of fungi. 728 00:39:48,990 --> 00:39:50,320 And so what we've started to do 729 00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,151 is to look to social insects, who like us, 730 00:39:53,151 --> 00:39:56,484 have many challenges with microbial pathogens 731 00:39:56,484 --> 00:39:58,650 that would like nothing other 732 00:39:58,650 --> 00:40:01,575 than to destroy their entire society. 733 00:40:01,575 --> 00:40:03,240 Holy moly. 734 00:40:06,370 --> 00:40:08,050 One promising candidate 735 00:40:08,050 --> 00:40:12,000 is nature's worst housekeeper, the winnow ant. 736 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:14,300 Seemingly oblivious to hygiene, 737 00:40:14,300 --> 00:40:18,430 the ants live surrounded by waste and decaying bodies. 738 00:40:18,430 --> 00:40:20,410 Right next to the larvae and the eggs 739 00:40:20,410 --> 00:40:22,570 we found a whole bunch of ant poop 740 00:40:22,570 --> 00:40:24,935 and ant skeletons, dead ants, 741 00:40:24,935 --> 00:40:26,490 and so almost certainly that means 742 00:40:26,490 --> 00:40:28,860 the ants are doing something interesting. 743 00:40:28,860 --> 00:40:30,700 Think about it in the context of your own life. 744 00:40:30,700 --> 00:40:34,240 If you had in your bedroom a bunch of poop and dead bodies, 745 00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:36,680 you'd immediately worry about, well how did they get there, 746 00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:38,570 but also about pathogens, right? 747 00:40:38,570 --> 00:40:40,480 How do you prevent the pathogens 748 00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:42,780 associated with those things from killing you? 749 00:40:43,720 --> 00:40:45,450 What we're doing here is collecting the ants, 750 00:40:45,450 --> 00:40:47,600 but also collecting some of their garbage, 751 00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:48,940 and what we wanna do is figure out 752 00:40:48,940 --> 00:40:51,210 if in that garbage there's a fungus 753 00:40:51,210 --> 00:40:53,800 which could be as useful as an antibiotic, 754 00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:55,670 but also that the ants might be using 755 00:40:55,670 --> 00:40:58,360 to break down what's the waste in their colony. 756 00:41:01,562 --> 00:41:03,756 In the lab, 757 00:41:03,756 --> 00:41:07,395 Anne Madden recovers the fungi found on the ants, 758 00:41:07,395 --> 00:41:12,000 opening the window to a previously unseen world. 759 00:41:13,158 --> 00:41:15,500 So this is my favorite part, 760 00:41:15,500 --> 00:41:18,530 because you never really know what's going to grow 761 00:41:18,530 --> 00:41:20,840 from these insects on a Petri plate. 762 00:41:22,150 --> 00:41:24,350 It's crazy diversity for one insect. 763 00:41:24,350 --> 00:41:25,380 That's awesome. 764 00:41:25,380 --> 00:41:27,360 We're seeing different fungi here, 765 00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,420 but it's likely that there are more species here 766 00:41:29,420 --> 00:41:30,760 than we can even see. 767 00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:32,060 My biggest hope is that this 768 00:41:32,060 --> 00:41:34,660 has got antibiotic producing fungi in it, 769 00:41:34,660 --> 00:41:37,673 this has got fungi we can use to clean up human waste, 770 00:41:37,673 --> 00:41:40,680 yeah I guess we don't know what these are yet, right? 771 00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:42,900 Right, so we have to do further genetic sequencing 772 00:41:42,900 --> 00:41:43,990 to find out who they are 773 00:41:43,990 --> 00:41:45,860 so that afterwards we can find out what they do. 774 00:41:45,860 --> 00:41:47,970 It makes me antsy not to know . 775 00:41:47,970 --> 00:41:48,950 Is that too much? 776 00:41:48,950 --> 00:41:49,783 Yeah, sorry. 777 00:41:51,660 --> 00:41:53,740 We've barely begun our journey 778 00:41:53,740 --> 00:41:56,640 into the mysterious fungal kingdom. 779 00:41:56,640 --> 00:42:00,870 There are wonders to be discovered wherever we search. 780 00:42:00,870 --> 00:42:03,570 So if we look to many of our problems, 781 00:42:03,570 --> 00:42:05,870 and we think about what the challenge is, 782 00:42:05,870 --> 00:42:09,090 fungi offer a vast reservoir of possibilities. 783 00:42:09,090 --> 00:42:12,017 Both because of their mastery of chemistry, 784 00:42:12,017 --> 00:42:14,080 and because of their diversity. 785 00:42:17,670 --> 00:42:21,172 Fungi are nature's great survivors. 786 00:42:21,172 --> 00:42:23,851 This makes them both powerful allies, 787 00:42:23,851 --> 00:42:27,650 and given the chance, formidable foes. 788 00:42:29,097 --> 00:42:32,532 An unfolding epidemic on Canada's west coast 789 00:42:32,532 --> 00:42:35,710 is a warning of fungi's lethal power. 790 00:42:37,930 --> 00:42:42,930 In 2001, vets on Vancouver Island noticed something unusual. 791 00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:47,060 Many cats and dogs developed lumps under their skin, 792 00:42:47,060 --> 00:42:49,153 and were having trouble breathing. 793 00:42:49,153 --> 00:42:50,905 (phone rings) 794 00:42:50,905 --> 00:42:54,158 Good afternoon, Dr. Ghesquiere's office. 795 00:42:54,158 --> 00:42:56,990 Soon, people began complaining 796 00:42:56,990 --> 00:43:00,496 of stubborn coughs, headaches, and night sweats. 797 00:43:00,496 --> 00:43:03,940 X-rays showed shadows on their lungs. 798 00:43:03,940 --> 00:43:05,270 They thought they had cancer, 799 00:43:05,270 --> 00:43:07,230 they were told that by their surgeons, 800 00:43:07,230 --> 00:43:09,298 and so they'd cut it out, 801 00:43:09,298 --> 00:43:11,384 and lo and behold it was not a cancer, 802 00:43:11,384 --> 00:43:12,217 it was a fungal infection. 803 00:43:13,540 --> 00:43:15,683 The culprit turned out 804 00:43:15,683 --> 00:43:18,660 to be cryptococcus gattii, a relatively harmless fungi, 805 00:43:18,660 --> 00:43:19,900 previously only seen 806 00:43:19,900 --> 00:43:23,070 in tropical environments like Australia. 807 00:43:23,070 --> 00:43:26,140 The question was how did it get here, we did not know. 808 00:43:26,140 --> 00:43:28,980 And this is where we've bit of a detective story 809 00:43:28,980 --> 00:43:30,510 to sort that out. 810 00:43:30,510 --> 00:43:33,370 What we are really looking at when we are looking at fungi 811 00:43:33,370 --> 00:43:35,040 is evolution itself. 812 00:43:36,860 --> 00:43:39,460 Professor Bartlett is a microbe hunter. 813 00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:42,577 When c. gattii emerged, 814 00:43:42,577 --> 00:43:46,772 it was her job to locate it in the wild. 815 00:43:46,772 --> 00:43:50,350 There was no time to lose. 816 00:43:50,350 --> 00:43:53,760 C. gattii had already infected hundreds of people, 817 00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:55,740 killing nearly one in 10. 818 00:43:57,200 --> 00:43:58,950 Once we knew that it was gattii, 819 00:43:58,950 --> 00:44:02,380 then we contacted our Australian colleagues 820 00:44:02,380 --> 00:44:03,870 where it's endemic, 821 00:44:03,870 --> 00:44:06,640 and primarily associated with eucalyptus trees. 822 00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:11,868 It gave us at least something to go on, the trees. 823 00:44:11,868 --> 00:44:15,708 And that was our initial starting point, 824 00:44:15,708 --> 00:44:18,830 but I was also taking air samples, 825 00:44:18,830 --> 00:44:21,780 and that was actually the big break through. 826 00:44:21,780 --> 00:44:24,380 All you really need is to get the spores airborne, 827 00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:27,680 and there's no way of controlling them. 828 00:44:30,230 --> 00:44:32,361 With an infection rate 829 00:44:32,361 --> 00:44:34,370 of 10 times higher than in Australia, 830 00:44:34,370 --> 00:44:37,460 Vancouver Island was declared a hot zone. 831 00:44:38,950 --> 00:44:41,770 Standing in the middle of these trees, 832 00:44:41,770 --> 00:44:43,680 in the middle of literally a forest, 833 00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:47,654 and not knowing whether it was going to be epidemic curve, 834 00:44:47,654 --> 00:44:50,745 it was pretty sobering. 835 00:44:50,745 --> 00:44:54,600 The second thing that crossed my mind at that point 836 00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:57,960 was that because I was the one there taking the samples, 837 00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:00,920 was if I had a risk of coming down 838 00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:02,570 with cryptococcal disease or not. 839 00:45:04,180 --> 00:45:06,080 What made gattii scary 840 00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:09,170 was that it infected healthy people. 841 00:45:09,170 --> 00:45:11,870 It's very, very unusual. 842 00:45:16,968 --> 00:45:21,220 Left undetected, the infection can be lethal. 843 00:45:21,220 --> 00:45:25,390 Ken James, a former mill worker from Duncan, was lucky. 844 00:45:25,390 --> 00:45:27,880 His life was saved by coincidence. 845 00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:30,325 ...Center for Disease Control 846 00:45:30,325 --> 00:45:32,115 is issuing a health warning. 847 00:45:32,115 --> 00:45:33,660 Here are the symptoms to watch out for. 848 00:45:33,660 --> 00:45:37,060 They were doing a report on this cryptococcus disease 849 00:45:37,060 --> 00:45:39,125 on Channel 6 News out of Victoria. 850 00:45:39,125 --> 00:45:41,420 They started going through the symptoms, 851 00:45:41,420 --> 00:45:45,664 and I was like, yup, check, check, check, 852 00:45:45,664 --> 00:45:48,380 and basically I had pretty much all 853 00:45:48,380 --> 00:45:51,270 of the symptoms that it described. 854 00:45:51,270 --> 00:45:53,650 ...undiagnosed fever, night sweats, 855 00:45:53,650 --> 00:45:55,818 neck stiffness, and severe-- 856 00:45:55,818 --> 00:45:58,830 Dr. Ghesquiere got a sample, took it and cultured it, 857 00:45:58,830 --> 00:46:03,300 and came back and said that I did in fact have cryptococcus. 858 00:46:03,300 --> 00:46:06,220 Invasive fungal infections 859 00:46:06,220 --> 00:46:08,060 are difficult to treat, 860 00:46:08,060 --> 00:46:11,575 and early diagnosis is essential. 861 00:46:11,575 --> 00:46:14,350 It's very hard to treat them. 862 00:46:14,350 --> 00:46:18,282 To give you an example, if you have bacterial pneumonia, 863 00:46:18,282 --> 00:46:22,320 you can often be treated for two weeks and you get better. 864 00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:24,880 When you have a fungal disease, 865 00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:27,700 you often have to treat for many months. 866 00:46:27,700 --> 00:46:29,800 I was on the medication for a year. 867 00:46:30,820 --> 00:46:33,143 Had I not seen that TV show, 868 00:46:33,143 --> 00:46:36,210 I might not be here talkin' to ya today, right? 869 00:46:36,210 --> 00:46:37,860 I mean, people have died from it. 870 00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,850 Not everybody is as lucky as Ken. 871 00:46:42,850 --> 00:46:44,870 The infection can get lethal 872 00:46:44,870 --> 00:46:48,820 when the fungus finds its way from the lung to the brain. 873 00:46:48,820 --> 00:46:50,470 You've got this fungal infection 874 00:46:50,470 --> 00:46:52,260 that would surround your brain, 875 00:46:52,260 --> 00:46:55,870 and in some people would actually invade the brain tissue. 876 00:46:55,870 --> 00:47:00,247 And so we can see small lesions that would look like holes, 877 00:47:00,247 --> 00:47:03,230 Swiss cheese in their brain. 878 00:47:03,230 --> 00:47:05,120 But how can a harmless yeast 879 00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:07,470 that enjoys a simple life in soil, 880 00:47:07,470 --> 00:47:10,950 find a way to invade and kill healthy humans? 881 00:47:10,950 --> 00:47:13,570 It's because the ecology of the soil. 882 00:47:13,570 --> 00:47:15,350 There are other organisms there, 883 00:47:15,350 --> 00:47:17,710 including amoeba, soil amoeba. 884 00:47:17,710 --> 00:47:20,094 Now, they are animals, they do move around, 885 00:47:20,094 --> 00:47:23,393 and they eat other organisms for their food source. 886 00:47:23,393 --> 00:47:26,046 In this evolutionary arms race, 887 00:47:26,046 --> 00:47:31,046 c. gattii built a protective shield to avoid being eaten. 888 00:47:31,403 --> 00:47:36,403 Now, shift that whole concept to the human body. 889 00:47:36,750 --> 00:47:40,090 As humans, we have a primary defense system 890 00:47:40,090 --> 00:47:42,930 that it's called white blood cells. 891 00:47:42,930 --> 00:47:46,124 And if you were naively looking at them 892 00:47:46,124 --> 00:47:47,410 under the microscope, 893 00:47:47,410 --> 00:47:50,410 they don't look a whole bunch different than soil amoeba do. 894 00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:53,950 Much like amoebas in the soil, 895 00:47:53,950 --> 00:47:56,970 our white blood cells, the macrophages, 896 00:47:56,970 --> 00:47:59,390 engulf invading microbes. 897 00:47:59,390 --> 00:48:03,106 But c. gattii is equipped to deal with such a challenge. 898 00:48:03,106 --> 00:48:07,473 The same traits that allow them to survive amoeba, 899 00:48:07,473 --> 00:48:11,620 allow them to survive macrophages in the lung. 900 00:48:13,386 --> 00:48:16,850 Long before the first human, 901 00:48:16,850 --> 00:48:19,790 this fungus had evolved the means to kill us 902 00:48:19,790 --> 00:48:21,890 should we cross paths. 903 00:48:21,890 --> 00:48:24,730 Probably would have lived out his happy little life 904 00:48:24,730 --> 00:48:26,770 without our even knowing it was here. 905 00:48:26,770 --> 00:48:30,957 Cryptococcus gattii lay dormant in the environment 906 00:48:30,957 --> 00:48:33,845 until conditions changed, 907 00:48:33,845 --> 00:48:37,800 and the change was global warming. 908 00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:40,810 We know that over the last 40 years, 909 00:48:40,810 --> 00:48:44,424 the average mean temperature has gone up 910 00:48:44,424 --> 00:48:48,020 by a degree or two in this particular area. 911 00:48:48,020 --> 00:48:50,510 We have longer dry spells, 912 00:48:50,510 --> 00:48:54,124 and so as soon as you get that dust stirred up, 913 00:48:54,124 --> 00:48:58,654 the possibility of people inhaling the (mumbles) goes up, 914 00:48:58,654 --> 00:49:02,318 and so the possibly of people coming down 915 00:49:02,318 --> 00:49:04,800 with cryptococcal disease goes up. 916 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:08,880 C. gattii is on the move. 917 00:49:09,723 --> 00:49:13,623 It was localized to Australia, then in a blink of an eye, 918 00:49:13,623 --> 00:49:15,680 this becomes a world wide problem. 919 00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:18,310 It's spreading to United States, 920 00:49:18,310 --> 00:49:20,855 and we think that this 921 00:49:20,855 --> 00:49:22,510 has established itself in this continent, 922 00:49:22,510 --> 00:49:24,820 and we're gonna be seeing a lot more of it. 923 00:49:24,820 --> 00:49:26,570 The Vancouver outbreak 924 00:49:28,326 --> 00:49:30,720 is a cautionary tale in a warming world. 925 00:49:30,720 --> 00:49:32,380 Given the opportunity, 926 00:49:32,380 --> 00:49:35,564 fungi are always ready to invade new territory, 927 00:49:35,564 --> 00:49:37,640 including us. 928 00:49:38,690 --> 00:49:41,200 It has only been by very good fortune 929 00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:46,200 that humans in general have only a few pathogenic fungi 930 00:49:46,691 --> 00:49:50,174 because there are only a few pathogenic fungi 931 00:49:50,174 --> 00:49:54,464 that can grow at 37 degrees, IE, human body temperature. 932 00:49:54,464 --> 00:49:56,840 That's been our savior. 933 00:49:59,300 --> 00:50:01,450 But as the planet warms, 934 00:50:01,450 --> 00:50:05,410 more and more fungi are forced to adapt to new conditions. 935 00:50:06,410 --> 00:50:09,036 Therefore, organisms are out there, 936 00:50:09,036 --> 00:50:11,688 but are not capable of causing disease today 937 00:50:11,688 --> 00:50:14,790 because our temperatures keep 'em out 938 00:50:14,790 --> 00:50:16,840 could become new pathogens. 939 00:50:18,784 --> 00:50:21,187 Fungi will continue 940 00:50:21,187 --> 00:50:22,980 to evolve in unpredictable ways. 941 00:50:22,980 --> 00:50:25,760 To ignore them is both a lost opportunity, 942 00:50:25,760 --> 00:50:27,400 and a dangerous mistake. 943 00:50:28,720 --> 00:50:31,293 And so I think it's more important than ever 944 00:50:31,293 --> 00:50:33,490 to understand what this relationship we have is with fungi 945 00:50:33,490 --> 00:50:36,010 because we don't have control over them 946 00:50:36,010 --> 00:50:37,440 and we're hoping that we can keep 947 00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,870 this mostly peaceful relationship going. 948 00:50:41,900 --> 00:50:43,750 Since the dawn of life, 949 00:50:43,750 --> 00:50:47,290 fungi have been the driver of evolution on land. 950 00:50:48,138 --> 00:50:51,370 They ate the rocks that created the soils 951 00:50:51,370 --> 00:50:56,290 and nurtured plants, turning the planet green. 952 00:50:56,290 --> 00:50:59,500 To have the planet that we have today, 953 00:50:59,500 --> 00:51:01,420 we had to have fungi. 954 00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:05,780 It was fungi that brought back life 955 00:51:05,780 --> 00:51:08,440 after each global catastrophe. 956 00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:12,490 If there were no fungi there would be no other life. 957 00:51:12,490 --> 00:51:14,510 They're a keystone in our world. 958 00:51:15,750 --> 00:51:17,697 It was fungi 959 00:51:17,697 --> 00:51:19,610 that paved the way for civilization. 960 00:51:19,610 --> 00:51:21,910 They have made us who we are. 961 00:51:24,060 --> 00:51:27,140 All around here are these fungi that are falling on you 962 00:51:27,140 --> 00:51:29,760 that are going to alter our fate as humans, 963 00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:31,810 and we're just starting to figure it out. 964 00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:36,630 And as we begin to explore the kingdom of fungi 965 00:51:37,490 --> 00:51:41,670 our most exciting discoveries are still to come. 966 00:51:47,286 --> 00:51:52,286 (birds chirping) (wings flapping)