Thursday, February 22, 2007

Bacteria wick through fungal hyphae


Laser Scanning Microsope photograph of fungi Fusarium oxysporum showing the hyphae (green threads)

I saw this article today on ScienceDaily. It talked about how soil bacteria use hyphae (thread-like structures) of the mycelia (branching, vegetative part) of soil fungi in order to get around. Basically, the bacteria use fungal mycelia as a grand underground highway network.

This is interesting, but the reason I felt compelled to blog about this article is the following quote.

“We deliberately make the bacteria work their way upwards against gravity so that people can’t say there could be a small amount of water trickling down and carrying the bacteria with it,” says Wick.


Dr Lukas Y. Wick: what an appropriate name. I just think that's funny.

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