This episode: A fungus paralyzes its tiny worm prey by acting on the worm's own sensory hairs!

Download Episode (6.0 MB, 8.7 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Bat associated cyclovirus 9 Takeaways

Not all predators are fast or agile; some are sneaky, or good trap builders, or just good chemists. The predator club includes animals but also plants and even fungi. For example, the oyster mushroom fungus can paralyze roundworms in the soil that touch its filaments, then degrade their bodies and consume their nutrients. The mechanism of this paralysis has been a mystery, but it's one step closer to being solved. This study found that intact sensory cilia, little hairs on the worm's head that help it sense its surroundings, are required for the paralysis to work. Worms with mutations in the structure of their cilia were protected from paralysis. How exactly the fungus acts on these cilia and the neurons they connect to, though, is still unknown.

Journal Paper: Lee C-H, Chang H-W, Yang C-T, Wali N, Shie J-J, Hsueh Y-P. 2020. Sensory cilia as the Achilles heel of nematodes when attacked by carnivorous mushrooms. Proc Natl Acad Sci 117:6014–6022.

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