• Rid­ing the Spore Wind

    by Elio — Sooner or later, but usu­ally sooner, any­one deal­ing with fungi will have to deal with the is­sue of spore dis­per­sal. Many fungi, mush­rooms in­cluded, are a spore's way of spread­ing spores through the en­vi­ron­ment. They do this in var­ied and uni­ver­sally in­ge­nious ways. Spores, like mam­malian sperm, are made in ex­cess, which en­hances the chances...

  • Through the Look­ing Glass: Sil­i­cate in Bac­te­r­ial Spores

    by Pe­ter Set­low — Amid the furor sur­round­ing the an­thrax at­tacks in the USA in 2001, sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion was fo­cused on whether the Bacil­lus an­thracis spores used had been "weaponized" by the adding of a coat­ing of fumed sil­ica to aid in their dis­per­sal. This in­for­ma­tion might have helped pin­point where the spores had orig­i­nated. How­ever, a con­fus­ing fac­tor was that...