0:00 In one of the recent videos, we've discussed the idea behind fungi being the first terrestrial life that settled on the surface and essentially colonized the rest of the planet for other life like plants and of course animals to eventually settle on. And this is something that scientists have only recently discovered and something that was a little bit shocking, but it essentially suggested that fungi very likely started their life on the planet as far back as 1 billion years ago or possibly even earlier. And the thing is, this is not the only mind-blowing and unusual discovery about fungi or I guess mushrooms that scientists have learned about in the last few years. As a matter of fact, today we're going to discuss something that's technically even more mind-blowing. something that bridges the
0:46 gap between the ground beneath us, the clouds above us, and something that we always thought was kind of difficult to control, weather. Because turns out that this purely physical process involving wind, pressure, and rain may actually be controlled by something we never expected. At least a portion of our planet's rainfall is potentially directly controlled by biological beings such as fungi and bacteria. And those sound this has been discovered before. It's really the idea that fungi seems to run the show that once again surprised everyone. But before we start, in order to understand how all of this works and why this is such an important discovery, let's briefly discuss how rain forms. So let's discuss the mystery of super
1:31 cooled water. And that's because most rain doesn't actually start as liquid water. It starts as tiny ice particles. And while normally high in the atmosphere, water droplets can actually remain liquid at temperatures far below freezing, even sometimes at the bone chilling -40° C. This is what researchers often refer to as super cooled water. But for this water to turn into rain or snow, it usually requires some kind of a seed or basically something to hold on to in order to start forming some kind of a droplet. This concept is actually known as CCN or cloud condensation nuclei or sometimes as ice nucleating particles. So for example, things like dust and suit. As a matter of fact, this is one of the main reasons why volcanic eruptions are very
2:18 often followed by rainfall. But while dust, suit, and even sea salt can act as a seed, turns out that they're not particularly good at it and normally do require extremely cold temperatures in order to work. And this is where this unusual discovery in regards to the biological superpowers comes in. So let's discuss these biological rain makers. And here let's actually start with this sudonus sering. This is actually a bacterium that very often lives on plant leaves or sometimes even fruit. And these bacteria as you can see tend to damage the leaves. But they do this in a very unusual and somewhat spectacular way. They actually evolved to produce what's known as inro or ice nucleating proteins. Very specific
3:03 proteins that allow water to freeze at much warmer temperatures, usually around -2° C. And in nature, these bacteria only use this ability to cause frost damage to plants, which then ends up breaking open the plant tissue, and the bacteria can then consume the nutritious insides. In other words, they're sort of like parasites that evolve this very strange ability to freeze the leaves in order to break them. But completely accidentally, this particular property also seems to produce a very unexpected effect. For example, during very windy conditions, many of these bacteria are swept into the skies and basically travel in the atmosphere. And well, because of these proteins on their surface, they become extremely efficient
3:49 rain seeds. In other words, they then create rain. And this is what scientists now refer to as bioprecipitation or specifically bioritation cycle. So here we have these plants hosting these microbes. The microbes are then swept into the clouds. By being inside the clouds, they then trigger the production of droplets and the rain falls back to the ground. Obviously watering the plants, but also helping some of these bacteria to grow and propagate to other locations. And so technically this is part of their evolutionary cycle, but it obviously has a very beneficial effect of producing rain for these plants that might or might not be attacked by a lot of these parasitic bacteria. But the thing is this is something that scientists have known for a very long time. Mostly because obviously
4:35 scientists try to understand exactly what causes this leaf damage for quite a while. But extremely recently in just the last few months, biologists discovered another species that seems to produce very similar effects, but also seems to do this for entirely different reasons that are beneficial to everyone. As always, you can find a study about this in the description below. But this major study that was published in the Science Advances magazine has now revealed that fungi seem to play a much much bigger role in all of this and seem to be so much more important when it comes to being rain makers. And so here scientists focused on fungi like fuserium which you see imaged right here and more karella that looks just a little bit different. And well, unlike bacteria, which usually keep their ice
5:21 makingaking proteins tucked away on their skin, these fungi do something slightly different, they actually secrete these proteins, proteins that potentially resemble something like this, into the soil around them. And these fungal proteins seem to be smaller and even water soluble, which actually makes them a lot more effective at traveling into the atmosphere. But in this case, it's really how they're made that seems to be also very impressive. Here the research shows us that these fungal ice nucleiators seem to be made out of tiny proteins that assemble into massive complexes containing more than 100 units. And these large assemblies create a very large surface area to then align water molecules and force them to crystallize into ice at temperatures
6:06 just below freezing. And moreover, these proteins seem to be very tough and even survive extreme pH levels and high heat, meaning that they seem to stay active in the environment for a pretty long time even after being secreted by these fungi. But on top of this, one of the other striking discoveries here was actually where these proteins possibly came from. Because here it might have involved some kind of an evolutionary heist. And so they seem to have gotten this ability by borrowing it from someone else. And that's because here by looking at the genetic code, they found that the fungi did not evolve this trait on their own. This very likely involved the process referred to as horizontal gene transfer and most likely gene transfer from bacteria or essentially the fungal ancestor in this case copied
6:53 and pasted some of these genes and specifically a gene referred to as Naz and then adapted it for its own use. And all of this must have happened a very long time ago. But this kind of a trait and this kind of a transfer does not happen very often between bacteria and fungi and normally only happens between various bacteria. But once these fungi acquired them, they apparently became extremely efficient at producing this and obviously at releasing them into the soil and into the atmosphere. And so because these proteins are water soluble and do not require bacterial cells, they seem to enter the atmosphere much easier and potentially play a much bigger role in forming rain. Although technically this mechanism of fungal ice nucleation
7:38 is still a little bit mysterious and not truly understood. Either way though, this confirms that both bacteria and fungi despite evolving independently seem to use very similar strategies in making ice and in causing rainfall. And because fungi like fusserium, for example, are actually very often found in the atmosphere here. This also suggests that they play a huge role in rain formation and most likely influence precipitation around the planet without us realizing. But interestingly, unlike that parasitic bacteria we discussed previously, here fungi seem to use this protein for a slightly different and less destructive reasons. And that's because they potentially use this for protection by triggering freezing at slightly higher temperatures. Fungi can
8:25 control formation of ice around them, preventing lethal flash freezing of their own delicate cells, which surprisingly also affects a lot of plants around them. And so in some sense these fungi can then also protect the plants and the roots that they usually collaborate with. And so here this protection actually benefits everyone living around them. At the same time the ability to stimulate rainfall ensures that soil remains moist and provides hydration necessary for the fungi to grow and once again necessary for all of the plants around them as well. And the thing is some of the recent studies even argue this idea of bioritation feedback cycle that must have existed on the planet for an extremely long time. Or basically it says that a lot of landscapes don't just passively receive
9:12 weather but can actually help shape precipitation when a lot of vegetated land emits a lot of these water vapors and a lot of these proteins into the atmosphere that then promote ice formation in the clouds and increase precipitation that encourages more plants and fungi to grow. In other words, many studies argue that this is a self-perpetuating cycle that seems to be mostly driven by these fungi with the additional contribution from various bacteria. And though this ice nucleation very likely started in aquatic environments, possibly during the ice ages, later on bacteria and fungi adapted this to survive on land. And if correct, these studies provide us with an incredibly powerful tool for basically weather control. And so here by understanding how much of this
9:58 biological material actually influences rainfall, first of all, we might be able to create more accurate models for predicting rainfall. But second of all, we might be able to use this as cloud seeding instead of using something a little bit more controversial like silver iodide that's been used in the past, which by the way is actually toxic and that can have damaging effects. In contrast, a lot of these fungal proteins are non-toxic and are actually very easy to produce, which means that this research is not just some kind of a theoretical study. It provides us a lot of practical tools for possibly making the planet just a little bit better, but also reminding us that in this case, conservation also plays a huge role. Or basically, by cutting down forests, we are not just losing trees, we're
10:44 literally losing a biological engine that creates regional rainfall. And so without these fungi, these bacteria and these plants, a lot of cloud seeding stops and the local water cycle weakens dramatically. And so this type of research is definitely quite important. But once again is also kind of mind-blowing because it literally shows us that the forest floor and technically all the life living in the forest seems to have a permanent connection to the sky above them and seems to even control it, producing rain when it needs to be produced. And since fungi and trees very often live in symbiosis, this is actually a really interesting discovery because it kind of suggests there's a very bizarre cycle going on here with the forest controlling the weather, but obviously in ways that we currently do
11:31 not understand. On that note, once there's some additional discoveries and something else we learn about all of this, we'll discuss this in some of the future videos. Until then, thank you for watching. Subscribe, come back tomorrow to learn something else. Support this channel Patreon where you can find additional videos, videos without any ads and can DM me directly or by joining a channel membership that grants you early access. You can also support this channel by buying the wonderful person t-shirt in the description below. Stay wonderful. I'll see you tomorrow and as always bye-bye.
