Mycosophy

Mycosophy is the philosophy that comes from seeing the World through the lens of fungal biology, ecology and evolution, and asking how our understanding of nature, evolution, life on Earth and our place in nature, can be improved through a rebalancing of a previous innate bias that arose from our past ignorance of fungi and their symbiotic modes of existence. Until 10th January 1969, mycology, the biological study of fungi, was considered a niche area of Botany (study of plants) of little relevence or importance to the life sciences as a whole. Although the specialist study of fungi (mycology) had existed for several generations, fungi had in fact been miss-classified during this time as peculiar plants. It turns out that fungi were always far closer to animals, having shared common ancestors with animals when life was confined to the oceans, much more recently than the last common ancestor between fungi and plants. On 10th Januray 1969 a paper was published in the international journal Science that proposed that a third multicellular Eukaryotic Kingdom of life, Fungi, be added to the pre-existing Kingdoms Plantae and Animalia. The paper proposed moving from a 4 Kingdon classification to a 5 Kingdom classification of life on Earth, fitting an additional branch into the evolutionary tree of life that had previously been accepted. The sequence of evolution proposed from the origin of life 3.7 Billion years ago, to present, starts with Kingdom Monera (Bacteria), then Kingdom Potoctista (Protista), followed by the three Eukaryotic multicellular Kingdoms of Fungi, Plants and Animals. More recently, Kingdom Monera has been sub-divided into two bacterial Kingdoms; Kingdom Archybacteria and Kingdom Eubacteria, making the current total of 6 accepted Kingdoms of life. The significance of the belated recognition that we have been living on a planet unaware that fungi are a unique Kingdom of life is that for the most part of history, going back to the ancient Greeks, we were always wrong to have seen the world principly through the lens of Zoology and Botany - as being the only important branches of Biological Science. Re-assessing wrong and limited assumptions, biases and beliefs that have arison from this historical error of under-rating the importance of fungi is therefore a part of mycosophy. Re-writing this wrong has enabled us to appreciate more fully the importance of mycelial symbiotic relations of different kinds as underpinning many of the most important evolutionary transitions during the history of life on this planet. Another aspect of mycosophy is to appreciate the versatile biochemistry of fungi in their prolific production of chemicals, medicines, antibiotics and psychedelics, and the benefits which these have brought humans through the ages, since the dawn of humanity itself. With the knowledge of fungi, their mycelial ecology and evolution, and their great benefits, it is indeed possible to see the World in a new light.

Genes and environment - ecological genetics

Environmental flux permeates tissues and cellular membranes through signal molecule cascades, altering genetic expression and volume of transcription and also influencing post-transcription modification of RNA (ARN) before it is translated into protein sub-units. After protein subunits have been made at ribosomes, further post-translation environmental regulation of the assembly and function of proteins occurs. Such environmental orchestration of genetic expression is termed 'epigenetics' (higher-than genes alone). Environmental signals also tag DNA with chemicals such as methyl and extra phosphate groups, altering its future expression, and cause transposition of genes and transcription promotors from one part of the genome to another, resulting in changed expression of genes in current and, to a lesser extent, future generations. Thereby through the feedback between pre-existing cellular components, molecules and environmental cytoplasmic signals, and information input from ancestral responses to environmental challenge, in the form of the tagging and rearranging of the molecule DNA (ADN), cells, tissues and organisms may have the opportunity to survive changes to their internal and external environments by having the capacity to produce novel proteins (new combinations of pre-existing protein sub-units), that better match the new conditions of 'environmental challange' as proposed by the nobel prise winning geneticist Barbara McClintock. This leads to a reappraisal of the role of genes and DNA from controlling an organism from the nucleus outwards, in a genetically pre-determined and utterly predicatble fashion, to one where genes, DNA and environmental signals can be co-described as a fluid molecular information system that channel protein formation possibilities, which help the cytoplasm of the living cells that make up an organism to stay alive despite environmental change. This reappraisal of the role of genes as in a fluid dynamic genetic-environment continuum has a knock-on effect on the way that we conceptualise the role of environment in evolution because it increases the extent to which the environment is thought to be responsible for the evolutionary changes that have occurred over geological time, in the diversification of species that live on our beautiful planet. This is not counter to the prevailing idea that point and frame-shift mutations take place from the distant cosmic environment via random mutation caused by background radiation (historically the only expanation for changes in the DNA code). Undoubtedly, cosmic radiation is responsible for many (mostly deleterious) random genetic mutations. Indeed, DNA has evolved a wonderful ability to withstand quite a high amount of random mutation events through the way in which several similar triplet codons of nucleic acid translate into the same amino acid, and through genetic redundancy whereby several copies of genes exist in different parts of a genome meaning that if one becomes badly mutated, there may still be existing healthy copies of the gene for the cell to make healthy proteins. However, by maintaining that cosmic and therefore random mutation events are the only driver of evolutionary diversity, the biological sciences may have perhaps missed an opportunity to appreciate a subtle but significant aspect of genetics that may have been working alongside the rate of mutation, iteratively and gradually over eons of evolutionary time (millions of years) regarding a progressive iterative epigenetic channeling of protein re-arrangement, with whatever DNA code that is available in a cell, that may enable a greater survival rate of offspring particularly during periods of environmental change. Such concepts have given rise to the fluid genome. A metaphor for this environmental induction of genetic rearrangement is mirrored in de novo antibody production - the immune responses way to deal with newly encountered pathogens (a kind of change in the environment). The way that the immune system creates antibodies to newly encountered pathogens is very different (primary response) to the way the immune system deals with previously encountered pathogens (secondary response). We think that the primary response works by taking parts of pre-existing genetic sequences, usually protein sub-units, and splicing them together in completely new ways in order to create a 3D protein shape that exactly fits the 3D shape of a newly recognised antigen (on the surface of an invading pathogen). The primary immune response mirrors that of how genomes respond to environmental change, whereas the secondary immune response mirrors the way genomes respond in constant conditions. The primary response genetic process is so complex that it is still barely understood, and it does take time (up to 14 days for a successful new antibody to be produced). It is as if we have understood genetics by first by appreciating the secondary immune response, fit for constant conditions, and only now realise how important the primary response may be with regard to how the genome responds to environmental change. This is especially the case when considering the broader theory of evolution that proponents including Darwin argued was driven by the changes in environmental conditions in which a population of organisms live. Through such a lens, it is possible to re-conceptualise that DNA (ADN) acts as an environmental information conduit; a molecule that informs cells about ancestral responses to internal and external environments that enabled past survival. This environmental information from which cells make proteins when triggered by environmental change, is then epigenetically tagged and passed from parent to offspring enabling the ancestral cell lineage (both from the recent and ancient evolutionary past) to pass environmental information into the current living cytosol;' information that increases the chances of cellular survival given the developmental changes in its surroundings over time. A great book regarding epigenetics is by Claude Kordon; The Language of The Cell published in 1993 by McGraw-Hill, Inc, London, Madrid, Paris, Tokyo and Mexico. Another good read on this topic is by Lynn and Dorion Sagan; Microcosmos - four billion years of microbial evolution, published in 1997 by University of California Press, Berkley, Los Angeles and London. Of course there is also Alan Rayner's 1997 classic: Degrees of Freedom living in dynamic boundaries, published by Imperial College Press, Singapore, River Edge (NJ - USA) and London, which deals extensively with how the highly adaptive genetic and metabolic systems within fungi, can shed new light on the rest of the Biological sciences, as well as our own species. Alan went on to describe Hyper-epigenetics as applied to the non-linearity in the way in which fungal metabolisms and genes can respond rapidly to environmental change. There is also a 2014 compendium of chapters written by different scientists called Entangled Life - organism and environment in the biological and social sciences (Volume 4 in the series History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences), edited by Gillian Barker, Eric Desjardins and Trevor Pearce, published by Springer.