Get to Know the Fungus Inside Us

You’re enjoying yourself at your favourite Italian restaurant when your steaming hot dish of tagliatelle ai funghi arrives. With your fork, you chase the bits of mushroom through the noodles to arrange your first bite. Now, pause: when you eat that first forkful, how many fungi are you consuming? Millions, probably. That’s because with every bite of every meal, you can’t help but consume an array of fungal species invisible to the naked eye. These microscopic fungi—ubiquitous in the environment outside our bodies—are constantly finding their way inside us as we eat and breathe. And not to worry: the fungal community that ends up in our gut just might have a special role in maintaining our health. Bacteria tend to get all the attention when talking about the intestinal microbiome—the collection of micro-organisms living in the habitat of our gut. But species of fungi are an important part of this collection, too; scientists studying these fungal components of the gut microbiome are beginning to discover their particular relevance to health and disease. Fungi are a group of micro-organisms, including yeasts and molds, that are mostly large and/or made of multiple cells—in contrast with bacteria, their smaller, single-celled peers. The genes of fungi reveal they come from a completely different domain of organisms on the tree of life and are more closely related to animals than plants.