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24.5A: Importance of Fungi in Human Life

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    Fungi play important roles in many aspects of human life, including medicine, food, and farming.

    Learning Objectives
    • Explain the important roles fungi play in human life

    Key Points

    • The majority of grasses and trees require a mycorrhizal relationship with fungi to survive.
    • Yeasts have been used for thousands of years in the production of beer, wine, and bread.
    • Fungi not only directly produce substances that humans use as medicine, but they are also versatile tools in the vast field of medical research.
    • Some fungi attack insects and, therefore, can be used as natural pesticides.

    Key Terms

    • inoculant: the active material used in an inoculation
    • ergot: any fungus in the genus Claviceps which are parasitic on grasses
    • immunosuppressant: capable of immunosuppression, or the reduction of immune system efficacy

    Importance of Fungi in Human Life

    Although we often think of fungi as organisms that cause disease and rot food, fungi are important to human life on many levels. They influence the well-being of human populations on a large scale because they are part of the nutrient cycle in ecosystems. They also have other ecosystem uses, such as pesticides.

    Biological Insecticides

    As animal pathogens, fungi help to control the population of damaging pests. These fungi are very specific to the insects they attack; they do not infect animals or plants. Fungi are currently under investigation as potential microbial insecticides, with several already on the market. For example, the fungus Beauveria bassiana is a pesticide being tested as a possible biological control agent for the recent spread of emerald ash borer.

    image
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Fungal Insecticides: The emerald ash borer is an insect that attacks ash trees. It is in turn parasitized by a pathogenic fungus that holds promise as a biological insecticide. The parasitic fungus appears as white fuzz on the body of the insect.

    Farming

    The mycorrhizal relationship between fungi and plant roots is essential for the productivity of farm land. Without the fungal partner in root systems, 80–90 percent of trees and grasses would not survive. Mycorrhizal fungal inoculants are available as soil additives from gardening supply stores and are promoted by supporters of organic agriculture.

    Food

    Fungi figure prominently in the human diet. Morels, shiitake mushrooms, chanterelles, and truffles are considered delicacies. The meadow mushroom, Agaricus campestris, appears in many dishes. Molds of the genus Penicilliumripen many cheeses. They originate in the natural environment such as the caves of Roquefort, France, where wheels of sheep milk cheese are stacked to capture the molds responsible for the blue veins and pungent taste of the cheese.

    image
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Morel mushroom: The morel mushroom is an ascomycete much appreciated for its delicate taste.

    Fermentation of grains to produce beer and of fruits to produce wine is an ancient art that humans in most cultures have practiced for millennia. Ancient humans acquired wild yeasts from the environment and used them to ferment sugars into CO2 and ethanol under anaerobic conditions. It is now possible to purchase isolated strains of wild yeasts from different wine-making regions. Louis Pasteur was instrumental in developing a reliable strain of brewer’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, for the French brewing industry in the late 1850s.

    Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also know as baker’s yeast, is an important ingredient in bread, a food that has been considered a staple of human life for thousands of years. Before isolated yeast became available in modern times, humans simply let the dough collect yeast from the air and rise over a period of hours or days. A small piece of this leavened dough was saved and used as a starter (source of the same yeast) for the next batch, much in the same way sourdough bread is made today.

    image
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Saccharomyces cerevisiae: The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is approximately 5 µm in diameter and is important for the production of wine, beer, and bread. The yeast also has many applications in medical research.

    Medicine

    Many secondary metabolites of fungi are of great commercial importance. Fungi naturally produce antibiotics to kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria, limiting their competition in the natural environment. Important antibiotics, such as penicillin and the cephalosporins, can be isolated from fungi. Valuable drugs isolated from fungi include the immunosuppressant drug cyclosporine (which reduces the risk of rejection after organ transplant), the precursors of steroid hormones, and ergot alkaloids used to stop bleeding. Psilocybin is a compound found in fungi such as Psilocybe semilanceata and Gymnopilus junonius, which have been used for their hallucinogenic properties by various cultures for thousands of years.

    As simple eukaryotic organisms, fungi are important model research organisms. Many advances in modern genetics were achieved by the use of the red bread mold Neurospora crassa. Additionally, many important genes originally discovered in S. cerevisiae served as a starting point in discovering analogous human genes. As a eukaryotic organism, the yeast cell produces and modifies proteins in a manner similar to human cells, as opposed to the bacterium Escherichia coli, which lacks the internal membrane structures and enzymes to tag proteins for export. This makes yeast a much better organism for use in recombinant DNA technology experiments. Like bacteria, yeasts grow easily in culture, have a short generation time, and are amenable to genetic modification.

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    This page titled 24.5A: Importance of Fungi in Human Life is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Boundless.

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