How a WVU student discovered a fungus that could help treat addiction, depression

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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WBOY) — Following her discovery of a life-changing fungus earlier this year, 12 News spoke with West Virginia University student Corrine Hazel and her professor on how they came across the fungus that's eluded scientists for nearly a century.
Hazel wasn't looking to discover a new species. She was working on a research project that involved morning glories, a fungus known for dispersing a protective chemical called 'ergot alkaloids.' But one day, something caught her eye, little bits of fuzz on the inside of some seed coats.
Hazel's professor, Daniel Panaccione, is the Davis Michael Professor of Plant and Soil Science at WVU and has been studying ergot alkaloids for years.
In the 1930s, scientist Albert Hofmann altered an ergot alkaloid from a morning glory plant to create the hallucinogenic, LSD. He thought that it actually must've been a fungus on the plant that produces the chemical, but he could never find it. For almost a century, no one could find it, even though they knew it must be there.
Panaccione and Hazel realized they could have the missing fungus.
'We didn't want to get our hopes up too high,' Panaccione said. 'We had some level of skepticism until we had a lot more data, but inside I was excited.'
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To confirm that this was a new species, the pair had to figure out the fungus's entire DNA sequence and see how different it was from other fungi. Hazel said extracting a full DNA sample required some trial and error.
'I guess I never really knew how much, like, trial and error went into the process just to get your experiments to work. Sometimes, you have to try quite a few times,' Hazel said.
When the pair got the DNA sequence back from the lab, it was official. This was, in fact, a new species of fungus—likely the one that eluded Hofmann in his day. They named it 'Periglandula clandestina,' as the word 'clandestine' means 'something kept secret.' Professor Panaccione said that in his more than 30 years of research, this is the first time he has discovered a new fungus.
The discovery yields new possibilities, as ergot alkaloids are known for their medical properties.
'This fungus makes such high quantities of those chemicals, and by expressing the genes in an organism like yeast, you could recombine them and make new versions or make greater quantities, and the chemicals are used to treat dementia, migraine, and a variety of other conditions,' Panaccione said.
The WVU team has found, though, that Periglandula clandestina doesn't like to grow away from the morning glories. Why and how to get it to grow is a new question for WVU faculty and students to look into.
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