Largest Living Organism Is A Fungus

Makarand writes "A single enormous underground fungus found growing in a Canadian forest and estimated to between 2000 and 8500 years old could easily be the largest known living organism on earth. This fungus is believed to have begun its life as a microscopic spore and then grown to cover an area of around an area of 9.65 square kilometers. That it is a single organism was confirmed by collecting samples of the fungus from different parts of the forest and observing their reactions as they were grown together on Petri dishes. Fungal growths have the ability to distinguish their own growths from other fungal individuals."

Comments

Yes, but how many Volkswagen bugs...

[Ieshan]

The article does give some very interesting statistics, but I'd be interested to know if any Astronomers can estimate how many Volkswagen Bugs this fungus might occupy...

Re:Um?

[PurpleFloyd]

No, but separate cells in a mushroom or slime mold are. The important thing is that each cell can communicate with its neighbors, and has some role to play in a larger system. Also, it would have to communicate intracellularly, or it could never reproduce. That's the Central Dogma of molecular biology: DNA->RNA->proteins. Any organism which lacked intracellular communication would die almost immediately.

Even assuming you meant "intercellular," however, the story mentioned that the cells responded differently towards each other than they did towards "outsiders." If this is the case, then the cells must have some form of communication with the outside world, and with each other. Ergo, it's a single organism, since the cells communicate. Whether it's a fungus doesn't matter; whether it has cells that communicate with each other does.