College student discovers mysterious fungus that eluded LSD's inventor
An undergraduate student at West Virginia University (WVU) recently discovered a mystery fungus that has eluded mycologists for decades. The fungus produces similar effects to the semisynthetic hallucinogenic compound lysergic acid diethylamide–aka LSD. Despite its recreational use, LSD in the right dose can be used to treat addiction, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This new species of fungus, named Periglandula clandestina, could share some similar therapeutic benefits. It is described in a study recently published in the journal Mycologia.
Periglandula clandestina was discovered by WVU junior and environmental microbiology major Corinne Hazel. She found the species growing on morning glory plants (family Convolvulaceae) while working in the lab with WVU mycologist Daniel Panaccione. Hazel was initially studying how morning glories disperse protective chemicals called ergot alkaloids through their roots. These chemicals are made exclusively by fungi and they are often found growing on grains. Morning glories live in symbiosis with the fungi that produce the same ergot alkaloids. While studying the alkaloids' dispersal on the morning glories in the lab, Hazel saw evidence of a fungus.
[ Related: Lion's mane mushroom shows promise in boosting brain cell growth. ]
'We had a ton of plants lying around and they had these tiny little seed coats,' Hazel said in a statement. 'We noticed a little bit of fuzz in the seed coat. That was our fungus.'
She and the team at the lab prepared a DNA sample from the suspected fungus and sent it away for genome sequencing to learn more. The sequencing confirmed that this was, in fact, a new species and the sequence is now in a gene bank with Hazel's name on it.
'Sequencing a genome is a significant thing,' Panaccione said in a statement. 'It's amazing for a student.'
These same ergot alkaloids were modified by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann when he invented LSD in the late 1930s. Hoffman hypothesized that a fungus in morning glories would produce alkaloids similar to those in LSD, but the exact species remained a mystery until now.
'Morning glories contain high concentrations of similar lysergic acid derivatives that give them their psychedelic activities,' Panaccione said. 'This inspired Hofmann and others to investigate morning glories for the presence of a hidden fungus related to the ergot fungus that might be the source of these chemicals. They found very similar chemicals, but they could never find the fungus itself.'
Ergot alkaloids can be poisonous to humans and livestock and can have unwanted side effects, when used in the incorrect dose. However, some clinicians do use them to treat migraines, dementia, uterine hemorrhaging, and Parkinson's disease. According to the team, the newly discovered Periglandula clandestina is highly efficient at making ergot alkaloids in large quantities, which could make it useful in future pharmaceuticals.
[ Related: A hunk of cheese is a perfect playground for fungal antibiotics. ]
'Many things are toxic. But if you administer them in the right dosage or modify them, they can be useful pharmaceuticals,' Panaccione explains. 'By studying them, we may be able to figure out ways to bypass the side effects. These are big issues for medicine and agriculture.'
Matt Kasson, a WVU mycologist who was not involved in the study, tells Popular Science, 'Many fungi live in close association with their hosts and can't be easily cultured in vitro. As such, the successful cultivation of these fungi is a huge step forward for understanding their biology.'
The name Periglandula clandestina is an homage to just how well it has eluded scientists for nearly a century.
'I think that's the perfect name,' Panaccione said. 'And I love that we did this project together. Corinne [Hazel] has a ton of talent. It's about students recognizing the opportunities, seizing them and having the skill and the brain power to bring this work to fruition.'
Going forward, Hazel is studying the most effective ways to culture this slow-growing fungus. She is also interested in whether other morning glory species may also have ergot alkaloids from a fungal symbiote that are still waiting to be discovered.
'I'm lucky to have stumbled into this opportunity,' Hazel said. 'People have been looking for this fungus for years, and one day, I look in the right place, and there it is. I'm very proud of the work that I've done at WVU.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
Google's AI CEO explains why he's not interested in taking LSD in his quest to understand 'the nature of reality'
The Google DeepMind CEO said he's never taken LSD and doesn't want to. In a recent interview with Wired's Steven Levy, the AI boss was asked about his pursuit of understanding the "nature of reality," as his X bio states. More specifically, Hassabis was asked if acid had ever helped him get a glimpse of the nature of reality. The short answer is no. "I didn't do it like that," Hassabis said. "I just did it through my gaming and reading a hell of a lot when I was a kid, both science fiction and science." Hassabis set out as a child to understand the universe better, and the quest is ongoing. He's hoping AI and, eventually, artificial general intelligence will help reach his goal. While some tech leaders have talked about using psychedelics, Hassabis said he's "too worried about the effects on the brain." "I've sort of finely tuned my mind to work in this way," he said. "I need it for where I'm going." Google DeepMind is the research lab behind the company's AI projects, including chatbot Gemini. Hassabis is leading Google's charge toward the AI race's holy grail — AGI. Google DeepMind didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Over the years, Silicon Valley has embraced the use of psychedelics, such as microdosing to improve productivity or going on ayahuasca retreats. Some investors have banked on their popularity, backing psychedelic startups that are seeking to turn the drugs into medical treatments or expand the industry in other ways. However, that's not a green light to take acid or magic mushrooms on the clock. In 2021, CEO Justin Zhu, cofounder and CEO of a startup called Iterable, said he was fired for microdosing LSD before a meeting. He hoped it would improve his focus, he said. Some of Hassabis's tech peers have been open about using LSD as established bosses or as college students. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, for example, took acid for the first time as a teenager, according to his memoir, " Source Code: My Beginnings." For Gates, dropping acid was exhilarating at first and a "cosmic" experience when he did it again. However, he ended up thinking his brain could delete his memories like a computer. "That would be one of the last times I would do LSD," Gates said. It didn't have that effect on Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that it was "a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life." OpenAI's Sam Altman has also spoken positively about his experience with psychedelics. Although he didn't specify exactly what drug he took, he said it changed him from a "very anxious, unhappy person" to "calm." "If you had told me that, like, one weekend-long retreat in Mexico was going to significantly change that, I would have said absolutely not," Altman said. "And it really did."
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
College student discovers psychedelic fungus that eluded LSD inventor
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A university student has discovered an elusive fungus that produces chemicals with similar effects to the psychedelic drug LSD. Corinne Hazel, an environmental microbiology major at West Virginia University in Morgantown, spotted the fungus growing on morning glories. These flowering plants belong to a large family with many species, and Hazel specifically found the fungus in a variety of Mexican morning glory called "Heavenly Blue." The fungus also grows on varieties called "Pearly Gates" and "Flying Saucers," according to a recent study published April 22 in the journal Mycologia. Morning glories were already known to contain a class of chemicals called ergot alkaloids. These chemicals, made exclusively by fungi, are the same class that the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann used to create LSD in the 1930s. Hofmann worked with the fungus Claviceps purpurea, commonly found on rye, to synthesize LSD; he came to suspect that Mexican morning glories must have a similar chemical-producing fungus after learning that the plants were used for their hallucinogenic properties. However, that fungus has remained elusive — until now. Hazel made the discovery while searching for the long-hypothesized fungus with Daniel Panaccione, a plant and soil sciences professor at West Virginia University. She is now investigating the best ways to grow the fungus, which the team thinks may have medicinal value. "I'm lucky to have stumbled into this opportunity," Hazel said in a statement. "People have been looking for this fungus for years, and one day, I look in the right place, and there it is." Related: Scientists show how LSD blows open the doors of perception Indigenous Mesoamerican cultures were the first to recognize that Ipomoea tricolor — commonly called Mexican morning glory or just morning glory — has psychoactive properties. Knowing of I. tricolor's cultural significance, Hofmann identified the chemicals responsible. The chemicals he found were previously only known to come from fungi, but his attempts to observe a fungus on the plant were unsuccessful, according to the study authors. Researchers have since identified two separate fungi that make ergot alkaloids on two other morning glory species, and they've found additional, molecular evidence for the presence of ergot alkaloid-producing fungi on I. tricolor. However, the identity of the fungus itself remained a mystery. Now, with the new study, the elusive I. tricolor-associated fungus has finally been identified. Hazel spotted evidence of the fungus on the plant's seeds. "We had a ton of plants lying around and they had these tiny little seed coats," Hazel said. "We noticed a little bit of fuzz in the seed coat. That was our fungus." Hazel and Panaccione collected a DNA sample from the fungus and sent it away for sequencing. The sequencing revealed that the fungus was related to the fungi previously found on the two other morning glories. Hazel and Panaccione named the new species Periglandula clandestina, with the species name referencing the hidden, or clandestine, nature of the fungus. P. clandestina is very efficient at producing large amounts of ergot alkaloids, the researchers found. The toxic nature of these chemicals likely helps protect the plant from being eaten, so it's thought to be a symbiotic relationship. However, ergot alkaloids are a problem in agriculture, as they contaminate food humans eat and grasses used to nourish livestock, therefore posing a threat to humans and the animals people eat. C. purpurea, the fungi used to invent LSD, would contaminate grain and poison those who consumed it, triggering an illness called "ergotism" that involved gangrene, convulsions, double vision, and of course, hallucinations. RELATED STORIES —LSD alters consciousness by breaking down barriers in the brain —Microdosing with 'shrooms or LSD no better than placebo, study finds —Weed may be bad for your heart, whether you smoke or consume edibles That said, ergot alkaloids can also be used in medicines to treat conditions like migraines. The newly discovered fungus could therefore have a role in medicine and agriculture, the study authors propose. "Many things are toxic," Panaccione said. "But if you administer them in the right dosage or modify them, they can be useful pharmaceuticals. By studying them, we may be able to figure out ways to bypass the side effects. These are big issues for medicine and agriculture." Hofmann was pursuing the medicinal properties of fungus when he first synthesized LSD. He only discovered LSD's powerful psychoactive effects when he accidentally got a drop of it on his skin — and then deliberately ingested more a few days later. This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
AI Weekly: Sam Altman makes a prediction
STORY: From when Sam Altman thinks AI will make a leap, to how Meta plans to automate advertising, this is AI Weekly. :: AI Weekly Sam Altman is expecting big things in 2026. Speaking in San Francisco, he said that's when AI agents could start functioning at a higher level. 'I would bet next year that in some limited cases, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge or can figure out solutions to business problems that are kind of very nontrivial. Right now, it's very much in the category of, okay, if you got something like repetitive cognitive work, we can automate it at a kind of a low level on a short time horizon. And as that expands to longer time horizons and higher and higher levels, you know, at some point you're going to add a scientist, an AI agent that can go discover new science, and that will be kind of a significant moment in the world.' DeepSeek has updated its bot for the first time since January, when the debut of the low-cost, high-power model rocked the tech sector. The Chinese startup said the new version of its R1 reasoning system offered significant improvements. Benchmark tests showed it was closing the gap with products from OpenAI and Google. Meta aims to fully automate advertising with AI by the end of next year. The Wall Street Journal says firms will be able to provide a product image and a budget - and leave bots to make and target ads. Companies will reportedly be able to personalize marketing, so that viewers see different versions of ads in real time based on factors including their location. :: ETH Zurich And a Swiss team has developed a bot that can play badminton against humans. The system uses so-called reinforcement learning - a type of AI that improves by repeating tasks. Researchers say it paves the way for bots that can do other roles like search and rescue. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
