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November is the final full month of the fall semester, and the beginning of the home stretch as CSUN Biologists start putting together semester projects and looking forward to a festive break with family and friends—before the final sprint into Finals Week. In the meantime we’ve got cooler, if shorter, days to enjoy, some spooky fungal bioluminescence to contemplate, and another successful alumna presenting research … on the life-long impacts of stress.
The Biology Colloquium Seminar Series continues Friday with a presentation by Celina Morales, a CSUN Biology Master’s alumna who is now a postdoctoral researcher in epidemiology and public health at UC Irvine. Dr. Morales’s talk, sponsored by U-RISE, will be titled “Stress and health across the lifespan.” Colloquium seminars are held Fridays at 2:30 pm in Chaparral Hall 5122; and after her talk, Dr. Morales will join a meet-the-speaker gathering with students in Chaparral Hall 5201.
Bermudes Lab lights a fungal “flame” for Halloween
The Bermudes lab inaugurated a new artistic medium with a festive October activity involving one of their study organisms, the Western Jack-O’-Lantern fungus (Omphalotus olivascens). The species is native to Southern California, and is notable for its large orange mushrooms that emit green light. This bioluminescence is also shown by the fungus in culture, though weakly so.
It was previously reported by a group at the National Institute of Forest Science in Korea that cutting the mycelium in a related species, O. guepiniiformis, induces brighter luminescence at the site of damage, and is associated with increased expression of genes in the bioluminescence pathway. This insight inspired lab volunteer Rudy Diaz to carve a Jack-O’-Lantern face into a culture of Jack-O’-Lantern fungus. Within a few hours, the carved face luminesced so brightly as to be immediately visible in the dark.
The mycology and microbiology communities are known to co-opt their bugs for artistic purposes (e.g., agar art), but as far as we can tell, this is the first example using stress-responsive bioluminescence to carve an image into a filamentous fungus.”