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In the video game The Last of Us, the world became a post-apocalyptic nightmare due to a mutated fungus known as Cordyceps, which turns humans into cannibal zombies. This is a fictional situation, of course, but this parasitic fungus actually exists in genuine life, where it infects insects, feeds on the bodies of its patients, and even adjusts its habit before killing it and germinating from its body.
As terrible as it sounds, Cordyceps poses no such danger to humans, and has even been shown to offer anti-cancer benefits due to its main compound, cordycepin. But there’s a problem: it’s hard to grow Cordyceps in the lab. The typical approach to developing the fungus is on grains such as brown rice. However, the concentration of lab-grown cordycepin is much lower than that found in inflamed insects in nature. The researchers suspected this was due to the low amount of protein in the grains. compared to when the fungus infects protein-rich insects.
In a breakthrough published Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, a team of scientists was able to effectively grow cordyceps containing high levels of cordycepin using insect bodies as a means of expansion. Cancer treatments based on cordycepin. The study authors may also help treat COVID-19.
Although popularized in The Last of Us, Cordyceps exists and can infect insects. It feeds on the body of its victim and even modifies its habit before killing it and leaving its body.
Of course, all insects are different. Finding the right ones to better grow the zombie-creating fungus involved the equally terrible process of testing other insects as a growth medium.
Over the course of two months, the study authors grew cordyceps in crickets, silkworm pupae, mealworms, grasshoppers, white-spotted chafer larvae, and Japanese rhinoceros beetles. They found that the fungus grew to the maximum in mealworms and silkworm pupae. Cordycepin concentrations evolved in Japanese rhinoceros beetles. Overall, the effects have been incredible.
“Cordyceps grown in edible insects contained about a hundred times more cordycepin than cordyceps in brown rice,” Mi Kyeong Lee, a pharmaceutical researcher at Chungbuk National University and leader of the study, said in a news release.
Cordyceps Sinensis is also known as caterpillar fungus because of the way it infects and grows dead head caterpillars. Corpses are used in classical Chinese medicine.
While researchers sometimes believe it was protein that helped create the highest levels of cordycepin, the study authors found that the key lay in a fat called oleic acid found in insects. When they added the acid to insect media low in cordycepin, the compound expansion was stimulated by up to 50%. This concept may contribute to the progression of a more effective cordycepin synthesis.
The study authors caution that developing Cordyceps using this approach is not yet imaginable on a commercial scale due to the limited number of insects used in the study. However, Lee said this “could be imaginable by using other insects, which he wants to prove through further examination. “
So, despite its macabre representation in pop culture, the Cordyceps fungus could soon play a huge role in solving some of society’s most persistent and fatal health problems. Let us fold our hands so that it does not mutate and condemn us. all to delusional zombie cannibals.
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