[dluan]

So, turns out there's many types of fungus that affect behavior, and there are even a few that create entirely new behaviors. One such example is ants, when infected by a type of fungus, will climb high and latch onto a branch by biting hard into it. This is so that the ant will get eaten by birds, which then complete the life cycle of that fungus.

There's not many well understood systems (the other well-studied one is toxoplasmosis and cats), but one researcher on Experiment, Charissa de Bekker, just released a new paper with findings from her project.

The results gave a first clue about the many genes that are involved in this manipulated biting behavior. For instance, that the fungus is likely producing LSD-like compounds and is secreting proteins that could affect serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain, as well as the ant’s ability to communicate through chemosignals with their nest mates. As well, in the paper, they release the entire transcriptome taken from the brains of these ants, giving other scientists a chance to use this as a model system and to begin to target which genes go on to influence behavior.

I was just talking to her about it this week, and so this news is very timely and a bit eerie. But very cool.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/s12864-015-1812-x.p...