From Newsgroup: sci.misc

From the -2making wine from water-+ department:
Title: This Fungus Can Make Water Freeze
Author: admin@soylentnews.org
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2026 07:37:00 +0000
Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=26/03/21/1319201&from=rss

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story[1]:

Fungi are truly weird and impressiverCothey can live anywhere, be
poisonous or medicinal, and, reportedly, transform plastic waste into
edible ingredients[2]. And in more fungal news, some groups of fungi
can literally foster the formation of ice.

In a recent Science Advances[3] paper, researchers describe a newly
identified fungal protein that triggers ice formation at temperatures
as high as 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 degrees Celsius). ThatrCOs
obviously below the freezing point of water, but in nature, freezing
isnrCOt that simple. Forming the first tiny seed of icerCoan ice nucleatorrCotakes energy, and ice forms very slowly at temperatures
above -50 degrees F (-46 degrees C), according to the paper.

Yet, we still get things like cloudsrComicroscopic water droplets and
ice crystalsrCothanks to ice nucleators. For the new study, the team
tracked the fungal gene associated with the ice-triggering protein to
a distant bacterial ancestor from millions of years ago, according to
a Virginia Tech statement[4].-aImportantly, the fungal protein
molecule offers a non-toxic, more efficient alternative to current
approaches to weather engineering, food production, or the
preservation of cells and organs.

[...] For the new study, the researchers studied a common soil fungus
from the Mortierellaceae family, which they extracted from water and
lichen samples collected during previous polar expeditions. DNA
sequencing pointed the team to certain genes that closely resembled
those inside known bacterial ice nucleatorsrConot unheard of, but rare nonetheless. To check that they were on the right path, the
researchers planted these proteins onto other yeast and bacteria,
which indeed manifested previously non-existent ice-making abilities.

Even more remarkable was the fact that, upon further analysis, the
fungus wasnrCOt simply copying a bacterial ancestor. Instead, it had
rCLadopted a highly effective trait of the bacteria and adapted it to
their own physiological requirements,rCY the team noted in the
statement.

rCLItrCOs a bit the same and yet different,rCY explained Rosemary Eufemio,
the studyrCOs lead author and a biochemist at Boise State University.
rCLFungi use the same repetitive sequence architecture as bacteria for
their ice-forming sites but have made them more soluble and stable,
which probably benefits their ecological function.rCY

Read more of this story[5] at SoylentNews.

Links:
[1]: https://gizmodo.com/this-fungus-can-make-water-freeze-2000733992 (link) [2]: https://gizmodo.com/this-black-fungus-turns-plastic-waste-into-edible-ingredients-2000662793 (link)
[3]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aed9652 (link)
[4]: https://news.vt.edu/articles/2026/03/ice-nucleation-fungi-boris-vinatzer-xiaofeng-wang.html (link)
[5]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=26/03/21/1319201&from=rss (link) --- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2