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Science Friday

Fact Check Your Feed, Climate And Fungi, Cells Solve A Maze. September 4, 2020, Part 2

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Science, Life Sciences, Wnyc, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2020

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Can Fungus Survive Climate Change? One of the most extensive global networks for sharing information and moving around essential nutrients is hidden from us—but it’s right below our feet.  Networks of fungi often connect trees and plants to one another. But scientists are just starting to untangle what these fungal connections look like, and how important they are. Mycologist Christopher Fernandez explains how these fungal systems might be affected by climate change—and what that means for the entire forest ecosystem. A Cellular Race Through A Maze Cells are the basic building blocks of life. Our bodies are made up of trillions and trillions of them, and they all serve a specific purpose. But these tiny workers don’t always stay in the same place. Many move around the body—whether they’re creating a developing embryo, helping the immune system, or, distressingly, spreading cancer.   A team of scientists in the UK recently set up an experiment to learn more about how cells move. They put dirt-dwelling amoebas and mouse cancer cells at the start of a maze, to see how well each would migrate.  While amoebas proved speedier than their cancerous counterparts, Luke Tweedy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, Scotland, says the cancer cells were surprisingly mobile.  Tweedy joins Ira to talk about what his team learned about cancer cell movement, and explains why recreating a famous English hedge maze proved to be a little too difficult for his cellular subjects.  Fact Check Your Feed: Are Kids Really COVID-19 ‘Super Spreaders’? Late last month, as parents and teachers were gearing up for an unusual and stressful start to the school year, conflicting media reports of coronavirus transmission among children started populating our news feeds. One headline proclaimed, “New study suggests children may be COVID-19 ‘super spreaders,’” while other articles cited researchers saying the opposite. But the disagreement didn’t stop there. Some outlets reported that very few preschoolers are catching the coronavirus, while others cited a study that suggests children younger than 5 may harbor up to 100 times as much of the virus as adults. Angela Rasmussen, associate professor in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, joins Ira to talk about the data behind these stories in a round of Fact Check Your Feed. She also explains new testing guidelines issued by the CDC, and a misleading report on the coronavirus death rate.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. One of the most extensive networks for sharing information and moving around essential goods is hidden from us. Yeah, it's right below our feet. You might have heard of it. It's the wood wide web. See what I did there? I'm talking about the fungal networks that connect trees and plants to one another. Scientists are starting to untangle what these fungal connections look like

0:23.4

and how fungi respond and are affected by climate change.

0:27.8

And what that means for the entire forest ecosystem.

0:31.0

This is something I really want to talk about with my next guest.

0:34.4

He's here to walk us through this mycological maze.

0:40.2

Christopher Fernandez is a postdoctoral associate in plant and microbial biology, University of Minnesota and Minneapolis. They call it the

0:46.8

you over there, right? Chris? That's right. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me, Ira.

0:51.8

Even though we can't see it, fungi play an important role,

0:54.7

right, when it comes to trees and plant ecosystems. Can you take us through a bit of fungi 101? What a

1:00.8

fungi fungi provide for plants? Absolutely, yeah. So the organisms that I study are called

1:07.0

micro-rizo fungi. So these are fungi that are really important for the plant nutrition.

1:12.7

Basically, these fungi colonize the finest roots of plants and provide access to nutrients that

1:19.5

would otherwise be unavailable for direct plant uptake. So plant productivity is directly dependent

1:25.2

on these kinds of associations. And so about 90% we're saying these days of plant species actually have one of these types of microisal associations.

1:37.9

So there are two basic types of microisal associations are buscular microasal fungi, which are really common in grassland-type

1:45.7

ecosystems and prairies and tropical forests. And then there are ectomicorazal fungi, which are

1:51.9

really important in temperate and boreal forests. And those are the organisms that I work with.

1:57.3

Which ones do we see on our lawns and in the backyards on trees?

2:01.4

Yeah, so it would depend.

2:02.9

If it's a mushroom forming fungus, then it is an ectomycorrhizal fungus.

2:08.2

Or it could be a satirphic fungus that just is decaying soil organic matter.

2:13.0

There are also free-living fungi?

...

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