|
Plant Biology
Mushrooms and Medicine
What does deciphering the family tree of fungi
have to do with cancer? Potentially plenty.
A gourmet food item that
prevents cancer? In a
world where it sometimes
seems that anything that
pleases the palate is automatically
bad for you, that may sound too
good to be true. But David
McLaughlin, professor of plant
biology and curator of fungi in the
James Ford Bell Museum of
Natural History, thinks otherwise.
Following leads laid by folk wisdom
and science, McLaughlin and Joel
Slaton, assistant professor in the
Medical School, have teamed
together to test whether certain
edible mushrooms boost the
body's ability to fend off cancer.
The unusual collaboration began
just over a year ago, when the
College of Agricultural, Food, and
Environmental Sciences' new
Center for Plants and Human
Health put out a call for proposals
for projects linking plant biologists
and medical researchers.
McLaughlin suggested a study
exploring claims that porcini, a
mushroom found throughout
much of the northern hemisphere,
has anticancer effects.
Center staff helped him connect
with Slaton, who was already
studying the anticancer attributes
of another type of mushroom
known as reishi.
Slaton agreed to test samples of
porcini to see if they affect the
growth of cancer cells in culture.
McLaughlin, for his part, is
working to clarify porcini's phylogeny
to identify relationships
among the various branches in
the fungus's family tree to
help enhance the usefulness of
Slaton's efforts.
Mushrooms have more than culinary value. David McLaughlin is working with
Medical School faculty to determine their potential for preventing cancer. A key player in the systematics
work is Bryn Dentinger, a graduate
student in McLaughlin's lab.
Dentinger became a fungus
fanatic as a teen when his mother
handed him a field guide one day
and challenged him to identify
the mushrooms growing in his
yard. Now he's applying that fascination
to help clarify relationships
among porcini specimens.
"We talk about porcini as though
it's one mushroom, when it's
really about 30 species,"
Dentinger says. By collecting a
variety of samples and sequencing
key genes in each, he hopes
to create a picture of the degree
of relationship among them. The
information he gathers will help
Slaton and McLaughlin design
their studies in a way that maximizes
the reliability and usefulness
of the results. It will also
help the researchers figure out
which types of porcini are most
likely to have anticancer activity.
Dentinger's work is part of a
National Science Foundation's funded effort by McLaughlin and
mycologists at several other universities
to clarify the phylogeny
of all known fungi using structural
and genetic information. That
project, in turn, is part of a larger
NSF undertaking called
Assembling the Tree of Life,
which aims to clarify relationships
among all living things.
The mycological studies should
be helpful in another cooperative
effort underway by McLaughlin
and Slaton to identify anticancer
activity of shiitake mushrooms. It
will also provide valuable information
for conservation biologists,
ecologists, and others seeking to
clarify how various fungi fit into
the overall picture of life on this
planet.
-Mary K. Hoff
| 
