Fungi are worth your attention, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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What’s your favorite fungus? You might say mushrooms and stop there, since for most of us a broad knowledge of fungi is lacking. Arturo Casadevall, Johns Hopkins professor and author of a new book, “What if the Fungi Win?” is trying to change that.

Casadevall:  People need to know that the fungal world is essential for life on earth as we know it and yet most of it is underground and you don't see it. The only time you see fungus when you go to the supermarket or when it rains and you see it sprouting out of the ground. Most of it is underground, most of it is invisible. The fungi breakdown everything and recycle the nutrients such that they maintain the life cycles on earth. The fungi gives you statins, the drugs to lower your cholesterol. They give you the penicillins, cephalosporins.  :34

Casadevall says our willful ignorance of fungi both limits our possibilities for utilizing their unique capabilities and may also result in peril. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.