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Fungi in Outer Space?  Fungi may not be unique to Earth. Scientists theorize that life is spread throughout the cosmos, and that it is likely to exist wherever water is found in a liquid state. Recently, scientists detected a distant planet 5,600 light-years away, which formed 13 billion years ago, old enough that life could have evolved there and become extinct several times over (Savage et al. 2003). (It took 4 billion years for life to evolve on Earth.) Thus far 120 planets outside our solar system have been discovered, and more are being discovered every few months. Astrobiologists believe that the precursors of DNA, prenucleic acids, are forming throughout the cosmos as an inevitable consequence of matter as it organizes, and I have little doubt that we will eventually survey planets for mycological communities. The fact that NASA has established the Astrobiology Institute and that Cambridge University Press has established The International Journal for Astrobi...

The History of Fungal Networks  Animals are more closely related to fungi than to any other kingdom. More than 600  million years ago we shared a common ancestry. Fungi evolved a means of externally digesting food by secreting acids and enzymes into their immediate environs and then absorbing nutrients using netlike cell chains. Fungi marched onto land more than a  billion years ago. Many fungi partnered with plants, which largely lacked these digestive juices. Mycologists believe that this alliance allowed plants to inhabit land around 700 million years ago. Many millions of years later, one evolutionary branch of fungi led to the development of animals. The branch of fungi leading to animals evolved to capture nutrients by surrounding their food with cellular sacs, essentially primitive stomachs. As species emerged from aquatic habitats, organisms adapted means to prevent moisture loss. In terrestrial creatures, skin composed of many layers of cells eme...