DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

What If Fungi Win?

Arturo Casadevall author Stephanie Desmon author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press

Published:9th Jul '24

Should be back in stock very soon

What If Fungi Win? cover

Could fungal pathogens outsmart us before we find ways to combat them?

Humans and fungi share nearly 50 percent of the same DNA. Because we're related, designing drugs to combat the varieties that attack us is a challenge. Meanwhile, in an ever hotter, wetter world, fungi may be finding new ways to thrive, queueing up global outbreak potentials for which no vaccine and woefully few medications exist; some fungi are already beginning to resist treatment. Among other lifeforms, bats, amphibians, and essential crops are also increasingly threatened by these pathogens.

Enter fungal kingdom frontiersman Dr. Arturo Casadevall, an epidemiologist, professor, and inventor. Casadevall shares how the 1990s AIDS epidemic's fungal complications drove his medical mycology work, how COVID-19's fungal incidences underscore the continuing threat to the immunocompromised, and how he and his Johns Hopkins University laboratory team are discovering ways to counter the threats posed by these cunning, hungry combatants.

What If Fungi Win? describes the beneficial roles of fungi along with their mischievous and deadly impacts and illustrates how committed experts like Casadevall are researching ways to save us and our food supplies. In addition to an overview of blights, lichens, molds, mushrooms, rusts, and smuts, readers will learn about:

• how fungi proliferated following the mass dinosaur extinction
• Oregon's ancient 2,384-acre Armillaria ostoyae—Earth's largest organism
• the rye fungus ergot that may have fueled the Salem witch trials
• mushrooms used to create vegan leather and eco-friendly packaging, as well as plastic-consuming fungi
• why it's critical that funding institutions pay attention to fungal risks and aid scientists in their work.

In What if fungi win?, Casadevall warns that climate change...could result in a few surviving fungi that are acclimatised to higher temperatures and have the potential to keep adapting....It isn't all doom and gloom in Casadevall's easy-to-read overview....After all, fungi are essential to not just our own individual survival (forming part of our microbiomes), but to the maintenance of ecosystems, and we have already benefitted from their biochemical properties....We simply need to change 'how we think and act' about fungi.
Lancet Infectious Diseases
An insightful look at how fungi facilitated evolution and benefited the global biome, but also how they could be the downfall of civilization...Fascinating...Eye-opening.
How It Works

ISBN: 9781421449005

Dimensions: 178mm x 127mm x 16mm

Weight: 227g

224 pages