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In the spirit of Halloween, this month we’re bringing you a very spooky story from the natural world. Research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology and recommended by the F1000Prime Faculty tells the horrifying tale of a fungus capable of controlling not only an ants mind, but it’s entire body, leading to the creature’s ultimate gruesome demise.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis sensu lato is not particularly remarkable looking, but it’s what its spores can do which really sets this fungus apart from others in its species. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is an example of an endoparasitoid, which means it will spend most of its lifetime attached to a host organism, which in this case, is an ant. When an ant has the great misfortune of coming into contact with one of the fungal spores, it will penetrate deep into its tissue. Once the spore has buried itself within the ant, it will begin to germinate and slowly digest the insect from the inside out.

Having gained full control of the ant, the spore will begin to direct them towards an environment which is suitable for fungal growth and more importantly away from the safety of the ant nest. Once the perfect spot has been located, the fungus will instruct the ant to crawl under a leaf and bite down, this is known as the “death grip”. At this point, the ant is now completely powerless and will remain trapped in this position until it eventually dies from starvation.

As if this couldn’t get any worse for the poor ant, the fruiting bodies of the fungus will now begin to grow until they finally erupt through the ant’s head and start releasing more spores into the air. These spores can spread far and wide, carried by the wind until they finally land on the next oblivious ant to fall victim to the fungus’ mind control.

If you’re looking for some more ghastly stories, don’t worry, we have rounded up even more spooky research, which has been recommended by the F1000Prime Faculty. We hope you enjoyed this gruesome story and Happy Halloween from the team at F1000! (watch out for any zombie ants!)

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If you like our recommendations, why not consider checking out F1000Prime? F1000Prime is our literature recommendation service, which has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians. The Faculty select those articles which they think are particularly interesting and important and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.

“Unlocking the key to cancer-free longevity in elephants is a human fascination in the quest for the fountain of youth and health. Vazquez et al. have just published ‘season two’ of their studies, following their earlier groundbreaking report in elife, which linked cancer-free longevity in elephants to their ~20 copies of the major tumour suppressor gene TP53. In this latest work, the authors suggest elephant p53 may confer unique cancer-free survival advantages through transactivation of multiple copies of a revived pseudogene of cytokine leukemia inhibitory factor LIF.”

Ygal Haupt and Sue Haupt, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, East Melbourne, Australia

“Gal and Libersat study how jewel wasps use their stinger to inject venom into cockroaches to render them docile in order to serve them as food for their young. In this elegant study, they find strong evidence that the wasps inject their venom into the subesophageal ganglion of the cockroach and that the venom there serves to inhibit neural activity to specifically attenuate spontaneous and elicited walking behaviour.”

Randolf Menzel and Björn Brembs, Universität Regensburg, Germany

“This vampire bat knows when you are sleeping, and it knows that you are you. Groger and Wiegrebe show that vampire bats, which feed on large mammals including humans, and which sometimes target the same individual to feed on several times repeatedly, can recognize the acoustic signature of an individual’s breathing pattern better than other humans can.”

Kent Berridge, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

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Current Top 3 recommendations

Rankings are generated using the article recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“This study is of note because it shows a new approach to investigate the adjuvant-like Th2-promoting role of Charcot-Leyden crystalopathy in severe asthma. In this study, a crystal-dissolving Ab-binding epitope on Galectin 10, a main component of Charcot-Leyden crystals, was identified. Moreover, a specific crystal-dissolving Ab was generated that demonstrated a high therapeutic potential in asthmatic disease.”

Achsah Keegan and Svetlana P Chapoval, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Laurel, USA

“In this paper, the authors provided compelling evidence that differentiation of IgE+ GC cells is promoted by a subgroup of follicular helper T cells co-expressing interleukin-13 (IL-13), IL-4 and GATA3, which was termed Tfh13 cells.”

Hai Qi and Xin Liu, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

“This article reports the identification of the enigmatic salt sensor in Arabidopsis. It was previously known that Ca²⁺ influx activates salt stress responses, in particular the SOS pathway, leading to expulsion of excess Na⁺ ions. Here, the authors show that glycosyl inositol phosphorylceramide (GIPC) sphingolipids in the plasma membrane act as salt sensors. The lipids bind Na⁺ ions, gating Ca²⁺ influx channels, which in turn activates downstream responses. This work suggests a role for lipids in adapting to changes in environmental salt concentrations and allowing tolerance of salt stress.”

Diane Bassham, Iowa State University, Ames, USA

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Hidden Jewels

Hidden Jewels rankings only include articles published in specialist journals, recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“This novel study offers convincing and exciting evidence that plants perceive acoustic cues and respond by adjusting their rewards to potential pollinators. Veits and coworkers found that plants that received acoustic vibrations caused by bees or artificial playbacks produced nectar with elevated sugar concentrations compared to controls.”

Richard Karban, University of California, Davis, Davis, USA

“This is a very comprehensive and wide-ranging review that everyone working on RNA and its interactions with other cellular components (including other RNAs, RNA-binding proteins, and ribozymes) would do well to read.”

Murray Stewart, Medical Research Council, Cambridge, UK

“Lin and colleagues used CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis to test the in vitro efficacy of cancer drugs undergoing clinical trials and found that the compounds kill cells by way of unintended off-target effects. Drug efficacy did not seem to be affected by the absence of the putative target. They also found that the cancer drug and TOPK inhibitor OTS964 actually inhibits cyclin-dependent kinase CDK11.”

Levon Khachigian, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

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