Welcome everyone to this evening’s BMS talk the first first talk of 2024 um I’ll introduce our chair who’s actually someone who probably doesn’t need much introduction but anyway um LM bod is Professor of fungal ecology at Cardiff University um she’s a prolific author having written or edited nine books and
Published over 300 scientific papers Lim was awarded an MBE in 2019 for services to micology and science Outreach so thank you Lynn thank you s and uh welcome everybody in the audience um we’re looking for lots of audience participation today please so let me remind you that we have the chat
Facility and please put your questions in the chat and I think that that Mark will be asking you specific things as we go along uh for you to comment upon in the chat so we hope to have a very good discussion at the the end um but before
We get that far let me introduce to you Mark and I think I probably first met Mark in the late 1980s early 1990s when he was an undergraduate at exitor and I was hugely impressed then by his knowledge understanding and enthusiasm for fungi and indeed I I’m still impressed
Today on those same counts um Mark went on to do uh PhD with Alan Raina at bath and then spent a brief time in Industry um did a postop fellowship at Cambridge and then had several fellowships at abine uh before moving uh to exitor where he is now uh and Mark researches
On um program cell death in Canada Alber can he’s he’s a molecular uh myologist um this this always impresses me because I’m afraid my molecular skills are really rather negligible and so U Mark is a very strong researcher both in the lab and in the field but actually he also
Uh spends a huge amount of time and effort uh on teaching and I think he’s still Director of Education probably been doing that for eight or nine years now and obviously um Mark teaches undergraduates uh and postgrads at exor but he also does a huge amount of
Outreach including um or ranging from I suppose school children to The Wider general public from Farmers uh to Medics um so Mark has a huge huge amount of experience and today he’s going to tell us about insights into fungal education and Outreach um and from you can gather
From that introduction that he’s very very well qualified to do that um so very warm welcome Mark if you’d like to share screen now and over to you okay well thank you very much Lynn for that um wonderful introduction and I feel as though I’m in very auspicious company
Um in relation to this particular topic because you’ve been at the Forefront of fungal education and Outreach uh for a very long time so um thank you very much Lynn um today’s talk is about insights into fungal education and Outreach and I guess I’m taking a a kind of reflective
Review of some of the contributions that I’ve made very recently in my role as chair of the fungal education and Outreach uh Committee of the British mological society and that’s opened all sorts of possibilities in terms of trying to talk to new audiences uh and talk about fungal
Biology um you’re going to see quite a lot of slides you’re going to hopefully learn some exciting and new things I don’t know exactly who’s in the audience today uh and I’m sure there are many people who are very very experienced in fungal biology and some in education um
And so what I want to do is encourage uh a bit of a dialogue so I’ll be asking some questions throughout the talk and if you can post the answers into the zoom chats then uh after the session uh Lynn and I will go through those uh
Comments and and uh use that as a starting point for a conversation and also uh leaving this slide on the screen for quite a long time at the beginning to emphasize that uh UK fungus day is one of the core activities of the education uh Committee
Of the BMS and uh this year’s uh UK fungus day will be on Saturday the 5th of October 2024 so please pop that into your uh diaries now so here’s uh me I suppose reflecting on what it takes to become a myologist uh and from that starting
Point I can talk a little bit about my uh educational inspiration and uh some of the activities that that I’m currently involved with so I started off with this little uh animation or or diagram showing how uh a fungus develops and of course early on in my career I
Was uh basically like a Spore very small uh somewhat insignificant perhaps um and um naive to the world um and a little bit like a developing fungus um over time and I’ve probably been an active professional myologist for over 30 years now I’ve developed knowledge and understanding of the funi a passion
For the funi and had lots of opportunities to try and pass that information on uh to others so like a fungal spore you have to increase in size uh adapts to the environment change your morphology maybe switch into a networked melal form that melium of course can explore the
Environment uh then capture new resources consolidate that and then commits to differentiation and the production of a complex uh multicellular structure such as a fruit body the culmination of that of course is then the production of new spores and the dissemination of that out into the environment uh to restart this cycle so
What I want to do is kind of use that as a metaphor for uh my own development as a myologist uh this is a picture of me taken when I was about 3 years old and um it’s very clear to everybody in my family that I actually had a passion for
Everything uh to do with natural history from a very very early age and for some reason uh whilst I was about five six seven years old I became fascinated by fungi I became fascinated by fishes uh and uh fascinated by insects and uh we will revisit those a
Little bit as we go through uh today’s talk um here’s me uh in my fishing stage uh very proud uh fisherman having caught uh some mackel on a on a holiday down here in Devon which is now where I live so it’s great that I now uh reside uh in
The place that I used to Holiday as a child and uh here’s me as an undergraduate uh when uh Lynn actually first met me I think this was during the final year of my time as an undergraduate at bath uh University and at that time I was completely caught by
Uh the importance of fungi the uh stories that were being told to me by my mentors and the fascinating role that fungi play in the natural environment um I’ve cropped out my best friend who’s actually in this picture I’m explaining something really really important to him
But he looks Bard stiff um but this was me as an undergraduate uh some 30 years ago and just to recapture the moment uh here’s me uh a a few months ago to recreate that first image uh now in my garden looking at uh some plant pathogens uh on uh plants in my
Garden of course the inspiration to be a myologist doesn’t just come from um their amazing biology it also comes from their beauty uh and their diversity of form we estimate there are somewhere between 2 million to 12 million different fungal species on the planet that’s an enormous number and
They are ecologically very diverse and evolutionarily very diverse and we obviously we have within uh the uh Kingdom of the fungi the true fungi we have a range of different filer or divisions and so there are many many different characteristics shown by the fungi just want to explore a few of
These here one of my Inspirations has been uh the awesome power of yeast molecular genetics yeast sacy serici Bakers yeast or brewers yeast depending on your preference uh has been the um was the first higher organism to have its full genome sequenced um and I’ve spent many years now trying to
Understand the uh role that those genes play in things like stress responses and death responses of uh fungi particularly in human fungal pathogens but using yeast as the model uh upon which to base those uh those studies of course in my uh work over many years I’ve encountered
All sorts of different fungi so this is the py ois that grows on uh cow dong very nice simple experiment that I get my undergraduate students to do is to take some uh cow dong or rabbit pellets pop them into a yogurt pot bit of damp
Paper in there and leave it uh overnight and after um a few days you start to see these beautiful uh sporophores being produced uh with the spanga at the top and of course these uh cells are huge they can be several centimeters long and when they uh discharge the spores they
Accelerate this little package of spores and around about 20,000g which is the fastest acceleration ever recorded for any biological entity um so you can see not just from the biology but also the beauty why I’ve been inspired uh to be a myologist um and perhaps you have uh
Some of your own favorite fungi as well I wanted to acknowledge the importance of people in uh gaining insight into fungal biology and biology in general um and a little bit later on I want you to think about who has perhaps influenced you to take up
Myology or to um invest time in uh studying them um I realized that when I put together this series of pictures of people that have been important to me um many of them emanate from a very formative period in my life when I was about 10 years old um so here we have
Gerald durl um and obviously his books uh that I read as a child inspired me he wrote them as as if he was a child reflecting on his childhood uh and telling stories about the amazing things that he did in kfu uh here uh David atenor in that
Famous scene with the gorillas um this is taken from the uh life on Earth series which was released in 1979 we have here David Bellamy um who was a British botanist and a television presenter and I have a copy of a book here called botanic man I don’t know
Which way up that goes botanic man there we go uh from that time and it still sits on my shelf uh in my office uh I did have a look at it earlier and there’s one short paragraph about fungi in there uh which is a little bit disappointing but you know some things
Don’t change uh next to that we’ve got Hines wolf uh he was the uh television presenter lead uh and actually an education and Outreach Ambassador which was quite an unusual thing uh back in the 1970s and early 1980s and he presented a television program called
The Great egg race and it inspired in me uh a desire to be very creative and to solve problems on the bottom row um this is the other side of my interests in uh biology which it was marine biology uh and this is Hans and lty H
Who were uh explorers in the 1950s and 60s and I read lots of all uh as many of their books as I could when I was a child moving on though um there’s a row here of people who are mycologists and they’ve all played really important roles in my personal development as a
Myologist so as an inspiration John Webster who was the head of biosciences at exitor I think he might have been the head of biosciences when Lynn uh was a student at exitor uh back in uh the late 1970s here we have HRI descals an aquatic H fory expert and we’ll return
To him uh a little bit later on then we have Alan rer uh so I met him as an undergraduate at the University of bath he was my personal tutor I think that was um something that didn’t quite happen by accident I think they must have read my University application and
Um he took me under his wing uh during my time uh in bath and here is uh aliser Brown who was my mentor uh whilst I was an independent research fellow at the University of abedine so all these people have contributed in some way to my passion for fungal biology um in its
Wider context so this is your opportunity to use the zoom chat function and just put in uh names of people roles that they might have played um in terms of what brought you to micology and um your particular interests okay so you can do that I I’ll carry on talking um
And I want to come back to HRI descals HRI descals was a post-doctoral researcher um in uh John Webster’s lab in exitor in the early uh 19 1980s uh and um I have a very strange tale to tell but essentially um back in 1980 uh my parents realized my passion
For fungal biology and they uh rang up the University of exitor bi uh botany department they got their number from an old telephone book they rang the number uh the number rang for a little while and somebody answered the phone the person that answered the phone was
Enrique disal um who I have very fondly known as as Henry ever since um and Henry essentially had answered a public call box on the University of exitor campus and um as one of only about half a dozen mycologists in the whole University at the time that was quite a
Chance moment but he understood that I was interested in fungi and he invited me to the University of exitor and uh started training me in laboratory work uh from the ages of about 12 years old he took me uh on collecting Expeditions uh locally in Deen uh but also in here
Uh in the uh Pyrenees uh we went and collected uh aquatic Hyer my seats from foam and from water samples and also uh we collecting uh black flies that had died on rocks uh just above the water level in streams and that was part of his uh ongoing research at the time into
These ento pathogens um and their potential at that time uh as uh biocontrol agents so very early on I had um an experience of working in the laboratory and also uh undertaking fieldwork um but I think critically it was also uh a training in microscopy and the beauty of things that you can
See that Hidden World uh under the microscope so here’s a summary of some of the mological training experiences I had leading to me uh leading to where I am now um I did my degree at the University of bath I worked for the forestry Commission on uh a uh six-month
Placement looking at mostly insect pests but also uh working on projects uh with uh Clive braer uh looking at Forest pathogens I did another six-month placement working for the Ministry of Agriculture fisheries and food learning biochemical techniques and looking at micro toxins in food and then I
Undertook uh my third placement with six months at The Institute of terrestrial ecology at mwood in Cumbria uh working uh for Juliet Frankland uh working uh on fungal decomposers of leaf litter so these very different experiences uh really uh inspired me to carry on uh in
The in the mological vein so um I applied for a number of phds and ultimately uh chose to work at the University of bath which is where I’ve been for four years uh working with Alan rer on genomic disparity in bidio my seed fungi after graduating I needed a job so
Um I worked for around about 18 months at fisa in sandwich in Kent and again my primary role was investigating uh fungi looking particularly at fungal secondary metabolites and increasing the diversity of secondary metabolites that could go through their screening programs uh and then I was a postto in Cambridge working
On neurospora crer the first time I’d actually worked on a Model fungus uh and the advantages that gives uh working on Cadian rhythms we isolated mutants that had defects in their clocks so they had uh slow running and fast running clocks we were able to use the uh characterization of those mutants to
Understand a little bit about the biochemical basis of uh clock and eping in cells and then I moved to abdine so I was a postto initially for one year working on yeast molecular genetics with uh Alis Brown and then I started applying for research fellowships obtained uh one from the Lloyd’s certain
Tenery Foundation uh which set me up on the pathway to understanding fungal program cell death and stress responses that ultimately then led to uh securing a Lector ship in exitor I never specifically chose to go to exitor it just happened by uh chance in many ways
Uh and I’ve now been in exitor for 17 years during my time um as a researcher I was also involved a little bit with education but my role primarily for the last 10 years has actually been in education activities both at the departmental level uh running the biosciences education program uh and
More recently as the Director of training for the MRC Center for Medical micology so this point I want to change Tac and introduce everybody to the current stars of the BMS education port folio uh so I think many of you know Lynn and her background uh as an
Educator but there are other people on the feo committee um with different expertises and different backgrounds we’ve tried to bring together people with diverse interest so it’s not just academics it’s people with exper experience and expertise in the use of social media uh so evina and Ethan in
Particular uh people with a passion for uh fungal education um from the foring angle so Cameron and Christian Christian is also a uh secondary school teacher and open University lecturer so he’s got a great deal of experience of um talking about fungal biology to all sorts of different uh groups and
Interest groups and Gary who is also an amateur myologist um based locally down here in uh Devon and he brings a lot of insight into um the local groups and how uh they want uh education to be put forward so how am I going to talk about this wider subject of uh science
Communication and Outreach so I’ve divided this next section up into the who what why and how uh these are all things that we need to consider when we’re putting together a package uh for educational purposes so we need to think about the audience the diversity and the
Backgrounds of the people in that uh the age ranges uh their prior knowledge and experience and uh previous experience and bias we need to think about what we’re going to talk about the content what are the key messages we try and keep those uh to the point uh the text
Of what we’re telling them decide what facts to share with people and um also uh how to collate opinions from people we have to consider the purpose the why we’re doing this are we trying to explain theories are we trying to explain what we do uh as researchers uh
Or as as academics uh to provide a transparent background are we trying to uh give people skills so that they become competent in a particular area are we trying to provoke interest and excitement which I hope we always try and do and then finally the how what’s
The platform that we’re going to be using is it going to be online is it going to be through written media uh where are we going to deliver uh this content how much interaction can we have with the audience uh whether or not they’re able to participate and things
Like language barriers so uh taking those a little bit f further I want you to introduce you to the typical family uh this typical family of course is very well known to most people this is The Simpsons we have Bart Marge Lisa um the little one whose Name Escapes me
At the moment and and Bart they might attend a mological event and they have diverse interests possibly their interest has been developed because of this little tiny mushroom growing uh up from the floor in the corner of their room so thinking about the who in the audience uh well there’s Homer uh many
People know uh Homer’s key characteristic he is uh strongly influenced by what’s going on uh in this part of his Anatomy uh and is primarily interested in beer and food so with Homer we can start exploring stories about fungi related to beer and wine production and alternative fermentations we can think about food
Stuffs and the processing of foods by fungi we can think about the importance of fungi in um bread production or cheese production or the production of chocolate all key things okay so a starting point might be a discussion about the history of uh sacris pastorianus uh which uh was formerly known as sacris
Carlsburg Enis definitely a name that I favor in terms of remembering its importance in brewing and you can talk about yeast biology uh with Homer uh the other who of course is Marge uh Marge uh spends quite a lot of time in the kitchen um we’re not stereotyping here but that’s the way
She’s portrayed in this particular image and she might be interested in the food value of fungi uh and she might have that as her primary aim you can start off by talking about recipes for different uh mushroom dishes or you can explain to her the differences between different fungi some
Of which are edible and delicious and some of which are highly toxic and poisonous in this pot here we have a mixed bag of morels we have the true true morals and we also have a false morale so can you explain to the difference to Marge between these
Different species and potentially we can explore why uh uh gyromitra escalent is actually toxic the fact that it produces a toxin called gyromitrin which is broken down to monomethyl hydren and even Explore a nice little story about how we know that um the original work that led to the identification of this
Uh toxic compound uh came from work that was being done on the space shuttle in the 1970s and early 1980s and it turns out that monomethyl hydrogene is used as a propellant in spacecraft and many of the workers who were putting together uh the propellant material uh succumbed to
Seizures and uh behavioral issues which led to uh people noticing the similarity with people who’ been poisoned by the false morale another who this is Lisa uh Lisa of course is the a grade star student and um I managed to find a nice picture of her looking down a microscope uh so
We could introduce funi to her through considering uh the biology of penicilin uh talk about uh antibiotic production talk about uh human fungal diseases for example which is uh my current focus in the MRC Center another who of course is Maggie um I struggled a little bit more to find out what Maggie
Was interested in but um this image here uh shows her with her nappy on and babies experienced nappy rash and uh 80% of um cases of nappy rash are associated with a candid aric hands infection so again it’s an opportunity to discuss the biology of the fungi uh the therapeutic
Options that are available uh and the production of antifungal drugs and their Origins finally of course we’ve got Bart um it didn’t take me too long to find a picture to suit uh Bart’s interest um so uh obviously this is the highly uh well uh the well-known phrase
Eat my shorts from Bart um and here we’ve got a nice picture of a giant puff ball calvia gigant here and you can talk about you know um the importance of gasty fungi um talk about puff balls and stink horns all sorts of things which get uh someone of Arts sense of humor
Interested in the subject so continuing on with the who um actually I started to think about how we communicate micology um in response to uh the publication of a document by the World Health Organization uh this document is shown uh down here it was released about two
Years ago and in this document they highlight the importance of human fungal diseases they give some amazing figures that uh two billion people a year experience a fungal infection uh 1 and a half million to 2 million people die every year from uh human fungal pathogens and that that um level of mortality
Exceeds uh levels from other pathogens such as malaria or tuberculosis uh it highlights the fact that um in subsaharan Africa um many patients with HIV that isn’t controlled um succumb to uh fungal diseases such as PCP and cryptococcus so messaging is really really important and being able to uh
Get across that message in a clear uh and uh unambiguous way is really really critical in terms of uh spreading a message and of course we have to think about the audience are we trying to talk to government agencies are we time to talk to Grant funders Public Health agencies
Are we talking to students in universities Colleges and Schools are we communicating with special interest groups patient groups um local um for a groups are we at a science festival where the general public is is there um who might have an interest in science but perhaps hadn’t thought about
Micology and of course sometimes the who is your family trying to explain what you do for a living can sometimes be quite challenging so we have to think about this audience really really carefully uh we sent out a questionnaire I think there were 18 questions to the British
Uh mological Society membership uh about two years ago and um this is just a little snippet of the outputs from that and one of the questions is which of these best matches you’re currently level of fungal knowledge um and we had choices from absolute beginner beginner Advanced beginner intermediate Advanced
Intermediat giving some examples who might fit into that category and actually most people who responded were Advanced beginners now we have here a very biased survey because it was sent out to members of the British mological Society um but it did give us some idea of what sorts of things that people were
Actually interested in and uh people want to know more about identifying fungi uh using microscopes and um a little bit about the Ecology of funi that uh came high up on the list of uh priorities in terms of the why um it’s important to explain about micology then
Clearly we can build on the passion that many people have passion for the beauty of the organisms passion for their use as food stuffs passion for U their ability to solve world problems through drug production um whether that’s antibiotics or antifungal or antiviral um we also want sometimes just
To entertain people um and I make sure that in my lectures that I do have Elements which are a little bit more um amusing uh and maybe uh go away from the call message just briefly to explore um bizarre facts and figures um we might just want to educate people uh for you
Know professional reasons uh and provide training and of course in my role as an academic we’re always chasing after the money uh to secure our next research Grant so again we need to be able to communicate the science effectively so uh here’s just a reminder
Of what it is that people want to know about they want to know about fungi and their part in the natural World fungal ecology actually 71% of people who responded to our survey wanted to find out more about that uh 87% of people were interested in uh finding out more about identifying
Fungi uh and actually quite a high proportion more than I thought actually just wanted to be able to describe funi and get to grips with the terminology and of course micology is a very terminology dense uh subject so what can we do to get people engaged in
Micology and listen to what we have to say and I think the important thing is having a narrative story having something that people can follow they can relate to and uh that they intrinsically find interesting so you can use as a starting point something like this book uh what moves the dead
You can talk about the benefit it’ss of fungal sex I’ve never found any audience that doesn’t get interested when you start talking about sex in fungi um or you can talk about specific groups um um so here we’ve got a representative image with lots of different gastr my Earth
Balls uh puff balls stink horns uh this cage fungus and so on um and so we can try and tell stories based on these different topic areas so here’s my first mini Mico story um this is a topic which has become uh widely of interest because of uh the
Television series uh The Last of Us in The Last of Us the tale is about zombies and uh the colonization of hosts by uh a cord deeps fungus uh possibly based on uh ofio ceps uh unilateralist and the changes in behavior of the hosts that are associated with those
Infections um I’ve had a longstanding interest in this particular fungus entomo mus this is an entoan fungus the the name is uh the clue insect Slayer is what it translates as and uh domestic house flies and other uh insects could become colonized by this fungus when a
Spore lands on the surface the Spore then produces enzymes that allow it to penetrate the cuticle of the insects and get into the hemosil the melium then spreads throughout the body and ultimately leads to uh fruiting structures here what’s interesting of course in this particular image sex
Always sells a good story uh is that these uh dying hosts are still uh attractive to other uh non-infected insects and so we’ve got a manipulation of the host Behavior we’ve got potentially the production of drugs which we don’t know what they are that can manipulate host behavior in some way
Um and uh the transmission um of that uh lethal disease second mini micos story I want to explore is actually related to what I did during my PhD with Alan rer back in the late 1980s and early 1990s um I chose to work on uh signaling systems between different
Individuals within uh a m uh melium and the story that got me hooked on this was actually based on this particular image this is taken by Martin answorth who was a PO postto in Allen’s lab uh at the time and it shows two St of a fungus or two species in fact
Sterium complicatum and sterium hutum uh that have exchanged genetic material nuclear exchange and nuclear migration is taking place either side of uh this mating uh response and we’ve got the establishment of two hetra carens one on the complicatum side and one on the hutum side and what we see is the
Appearance of a phenotypically uniform perhaps someone say somewhat Bland uh melium on the complicatum side and on this side here where we’ve got serium hutum we’ve got zones of instability uh we’ve got deterioration degeneration of the melium um um as well as uh melal toughs and outgrowths which seem a little bit
Happier the story behind this of course that I’m perhaps hiding people have probably forgotten is that this is an American strain and this is a Russian strain and it’s about the expression of information in these two different um geographical zones within the melium and the consequences of that so that
Particular story uh triggered a Fascination for mating responses and genetic exchange systems in funi and conflict resolution as well which was the topic of my thesis so uh here’s your chance now to explore um your own uh or tell me more about your own M stories what are the favorite
Things that you like to tell people about about funi is it something about their biology are there particular stories that you like to tell if you could share those with us uh then we could explore those a little bit later on okay finally the how how do you uh
Approach an audience uh and what do you do well lectures and practicals are my bread and butter I suppose um I teach large classes of up to 400 students um in various aspects of uh microbiology focusing on uh myology I have large practical classes with 200 students at a
Time um that is a very wellestablished format uh and the important thing really is to make a link between the hand on activities and the theory we also have the web and the social media opportunities can we use that to uh promote a better understanding of fungal
Biology as part of UK fungus day I’ve become much more familiar with uh social media platforms than I was previously and last year we were releasing fungus facts in fact fungus fungal Financial facts here’s a little known fact the uh Global value of uh fungi to the world economy is
Estimated to be around about $ 54 trillion or 35,000 uh pound uh trillion pounds and the contributions that yeast plays within that are larger than the GDP of Australia so alcohol production is very very high up on that uh list okay so we need to think about the
How whether we’re going to use web and social media traditional media are there opportunities for foray School visits can we use games for example to uh Aid in education uh can we set up some exhibitions uh and are there any contributions that we or you could make
To UK fungus Day last year was very busy uh for me um as the chair of the committee and having a a a very close role in organizing UK fungus day initiatives but in my role um within the MRC Center for Medical micology I was also involved in lots of other Outreach
Activities as well we do have a dedicated Outreach team um and so that helps a little bit but we were involved in soapbox science uh here’s pictures of uh some of the students and actually some of my colleagues this is lilan mamir here down on the key in exitor
Explaining about uh crypto caucus to a wider audience un unsuspecting audience we uh set up a super bugs exhibition by taking over an empty shop unit in the center of exitor uh we’ve had the killer fungus initiative uh building on what had been done previously in abedine in
Manchester uh and ran that in exitor as part of the British Science Festival uh for you K fungus day um I had an open doors event where we got all the researchers together from exitor to Showcase their research and tell stories to people about what they’ve been doing
And also we had a film compilation uh that ran in a local Cinema uh in exitor and that was packed out uh with people so we’re just going to talk about a few of these things um as examples of what I’ve been doing and what hopefully might inspire other people to get involved
With education so gaming um I noticed over time that uh games are a really good way of getting people involved and engaged we all know uh how easy it is to be drawn into uh a game and become very fixated on it uh and as a result uh
Perhaps learn things that we wouldn’t otherwise have done so uh with the BMS and the MRC Center for Medical micology we put together this fungus fax card game it’s based on a very well-known top Trump Style game we can’t call it top trumps for obvious legal reasons so we
Call it fungus facts but essentially there are facts around the mortality rate the prevalence per 100,000 the uh morphological form and the susceptibility of these fungal pathogens to various antifungal drugs such as osin fluconazol uh as well as publication number so with an undergraduate student in this case
Sasha Slater we put together this pack of 36 human fungal pathogens and you can play this game um for fun obviously uh play it as a 12-year-old uh but playing it with different age groups actually allows you to explore different things um so I played it with 12 year olds 17 year olds
A level students um and uh uh University and Master’s level students as well we’ve also more recently created a plant pathogens version of this so um amily Ward uh helped put that together uh as well so if you’re a 12-year-old you can just focus on the cool and bizarre names
And some of the gruesome statistics around human fungal pathogens and ultimately you know it’s do I win all the cards or not 17y olds thinking uh about um you know what excites them in biology we can talk about which different groups of funi are involved and the fact that there’s more than one
We can ask questions about which pathogens are more lethal uh we can actually talk about what an mic is or minimum inhibitory concentration of a drug uh what we mean by the term dimorphism and why it’s important and again playing the game do you win all
The cards and as a 21 year old or more so this is uh what I’ve been doing with my master students on my online course in medical micology um we actually look at the data and I get the students to produce their own cards I give them a list of the
Pathogens and say make your own cards go and find out the information and then we play the game online and I compare the data I have on my cards with what they’ve got on their cards we talk about the sources and the reliability of that data that underpins what’s gone on to
Those card designs and then that promotes a discussion of things like why antifungal drug resistance levels are variable between uh different species and different reports of the same species another area where we’ve been using gaming to uh look at fungal education is in teaching core skills to uh undergraduate postgraduate students
Uh we have at exitor a long-standing collaboration with an international group called labster um and they produce virtual simulations of laboratory environments the idea is that you can expose students in a safe online uh environment to very complex pieces of Kit so we actually had the lamster team visitors they took
Pictures of our con focal microscopes and then recreated those in a virtual environment and in order to make the learning more exciting we actually have a narrative and the narrative is based around uh this guy here uh this character is a farmer who has um a wheat
Crop and it’s infected with by MOS ferella so we were able to simultaneously train people in how to use a con focal microscope correctly but also get them to look at fungi uh so here you can see some of the images that we’ve taken with the con
Focal um showing uh the development of a fungal Hyer and scepter and so on uh and explore a story around that and we’re putting across some mological content in this on online gaming environment another thing that gets people excited is um anything that kills you is going to
Be of interest or kill other things is going to be of interest so in the UK there’s a famous television series called uh The Deadly 60 um and that has got people’s imagination uh captured lots of different age groups and we thought could we do something similar with the
British mological Society so we brought together some little tiny descriptors of 40 frightful fungi and on the website uh that we had set up you could click on the various images and find out a little bit some gruesome statistics about a whole range of different fungi from those that are
Poisonous those that cause disease in humans and in uh plants and animals uh to um uh amphibians down here and so on and in other fungi as well so that was a resource that we created for the BMS um I mentioned super bugs earlier this was an opportunity to put up a very
Highly professional uh stand showcasing the research that we do at the MRC Center for Medical micology but also get people involved a little bit in citizen science um so my particular contribution to this has been me and my microbiome uh visitors to the center uh visitors to our UK fungus day exhibition
For the open doors or uh to the super bgs could take swabs from behind the ear or from behind your watch these were then stre out onto uh selective media and the different fungi that were produced uh were then photographed and then sent back to the visitors and that
Was superimposed onto an image of them holding a plate with them and their microbiome and this has actually turned out to be a great exercise because we can start uh getting people involved in um surveys revealing information about their health care regimes looking at antifungal drug uh resistance and so
On okay um I’m conscious of time I think it’s 8:20 at the moment I think we’ve got another about 10 minutes or so so um another thing that I’ve explored this year and this is the first time that I’ve done this I’ve LED lots of fores in
Woodland and it’s very easy to engage people with real material show them the fruit bodies show them the effects on the environment the wood Decay and so on um but that’s not always possible people live in different environments and can’t necessarily access those so as part of a
Science festival that was held uh in Cornwall I uh LED my first urban walkietalkie um and the idea was that we would take people for an hour through a stroll through the High Street and talk about fun I don’t know if people can see on that image uh anything that might jump
Out at them as being uh a relevance uh in terms of micology um but I managed to find uh a few things that provoke conversation and discussion uh so this is Falmouth town center and so um zoomed in on that a little bit more of course in the Town Center we have people
Um I’ve just chosen this chat down here I apologize to him if he’s in the audience I think it’s very unlikely um but we can talk about malesia infections and the contributions um that they make to dandr um focusing on my own particular interest in medical micology we have a
Pub so we can talk about Brewing uh and sacr serici biology uh I’m losing track of where we are now sh repairs role that funi might play in uh leather production leather uh decomposition uh we can also talk about uh this I think this is a restaurant uh
Role of fungi in food production so there are all sorts of opportunities to spend five minutes 10 minutes outside a shop talking about a a mological story so a Bookshop is useful in terms of talking about biodiversity a typical Bookshop contains about 3 and a half thousand books each with about
300 Pages which gives you about aund uh thousand sorry 900,000 uh different pages and you can talk about the fact that you couldn’t even describe all the funi in the world on each one of those pages because there’s so many of them and talk about the diversity of funi you can talk about
The role that funi play in uh manufacturing processes such as production of paper the bakery we can talk about yeast genetic engineering uh cold tolerance go uh to the pub talk about the power of yeast again Nobel prizes for the cell cycle or for altery um my own particular research at
The moment is focused on animal models of infection and so uh going to a fish shop or a fish and chip shop Le allows me to talk about uh fish embryology fishy immunity and the interaction with uh human fungal pathogens we can go to a clothes shop talk about fabrics and
Conditioners talk about textile manufacturing uh in Falmouth I found an art shop that had a wonderful Autumn display so talked about Leaf litter decomposition uh we went to the grossers and talked about food production and food security focusing on stories around pathogens and mic orisa uh a furniture
Shop looking at wood production wood decay um and beautiful forms uh of uh decaying wood we even visited Vision Express which um is obviously uh a place where you can buy spectacles uh but their key character at the moment uh in their adverts is a mole so I was able to talk
About molines and hebeloma rosum which is a mushroom that produces pseudor Riser that connects the nitrogenous material in mole uh feces and waste uh but also allowed me to talk about eye infections and the role that fungi play in those uh we visited a churchyard and talked about Homa venosum which is a
Mushroom that grows on corpses um and also you can usually find a u tree so you can talk about taxol production as well and at a pharmacy we can talk about drugs uh antifungal drugs uh and antibiotics that are produced by fungi and human fungal diseases so all sorts
Of different things that you can do in uh a different environment if you’re a researcher then I would encourage you to do uh an open doors event um we invited people into the University of exitor uh both in 2022 and 2023 uh we had around about 600 visitors
Uh with very little advertising uh for that particular event uh it coincided with UK fungus day and we were able to explore in our first open doors event purely medical micology and in the second open doors event all of the other micology that’s going on in the University of
Exitor as a result of that experience we put together a uh set of guidelines or at least a checklist of how you can organize your own open doors event so it covers the planning the timelines what permissions you might need the health and safety the communications what’s most effective what’s not so effective
And what to think about in on the day everything from making sure that the toilets are well signed posted uh uh tea and coffee is available to um making sure uh that uh all the displays are in the right place and looking great so here are some of the examples
Of things that we had we had animal models building your own cell wall fight the fungus uh finding the uh hidden link uh in relation to DNA sequencing from ions to biomes looking at the relationship between the physiology of fungi and the uh landscape uh fungal art
And we’ve done some great things from all age groups from uh preschool uh right through to professional artists coming in uh and showcasing their work uh playing the fungus facts game and so on uh playing Immunology Jenga talking about me and my microbiome uh demonstrating point of
Care tests and the science that’s gone into development of those and having um over here you can see an art installation produced by leony Hampton she spent 12 months uh on a residency with us in the center and produce this amazing bronze sculpture showing candida Albans highi as they grow through uh a
Blood vessel uh and interact with macras uh so she was able to explain to uh the public the um significance of that what the inspiration was it’s also really useful to have a go-to talk um I have uh a talk called The Wonderful World of fungi it explores bungle
Biodiversity fungal cell biology and Physiology it’s got sections on biotechnology and bior Remediation it’s got uh stories around food stuffs poisonings all sorts of different things and it’s a collection of around about 60 slides which at very short notice I can usually put together and uh build a
Story from something that will last 20 minutes to something that will last an hour and a half depending on uh the time that’s available it’s also good to have alongside that some go-to activities so uh here’s me at an Outreach uh event uh last year it’s a BMS stand and an MRC stand
Got photographs of fungi had a very small uh bench space here just a small rickety table with a microscope and some cultures lots of leaflets from the BMS and from the RC Center um but the most important thing is to find out what it is that people are interested in and
Talk to them about it and actually as a result of that I realized there was nothing on the table that appealed to preschool children so fortunately I was able to uh quickly come up with fungus Fred uh this is based on blowing up a hand glove uh laboratory hand glove
Getting the kids then to draw faces on it and actually this led to something which we did at UK fungus day which was fungus frad fungi fungal or fungus uh and it allowed people just to make uh beautiful characters but you can also see you know how this could be used to
Explain about conidio Genesis uh and blasto canidia for example or different conidial shapes and how the morphology is regulated uh the role of tur pressure in uh determining cell shape um as as well as talk about the ambiguity of the concept of sex in fungi with the fungi
Fungal and fungas initiative I also have as a result of the undergraduate programs that I do boxes full of different topic areas related to micology so here’s my food stuffs um box uh which I can just bring out and take to events so what I want to do is encourage
Everybody uh who’s in the audience to get involved D um if you are very interested in uh joining us on the BMS um we have a number of feo working groups uh we have a newcomers group an education group uh and a UK funer day group I believe that Sally has already
Sent out um some emails uh asking people to if they’re interested in that we are currently reviewing uh the BMS website uh so if you have any suggestions for the Improvement uh either in content or the way it looks please let us know uh we’re trying to think of new resources
We’ve just undertaken excuse me uh a review of the existing resources we have we have around about 50 different packs that we can send out uh with information on uh and think tell us about how you think we can engage with new audiences and please do take part
Um please do get in touch with schools universities get involved with public engagement uh if you’re an artist we have the Massie uh Arts Grant which is currently being advertised at the moment on the BMS web page uh there’s significant amount of uh funding available £5,000 uh for two different projects to
Run in 2024 uh and as long as that can be linked into you UK fungus day um in some way we’ll be very happy so please do get involved so I just want to finish by acknowledging um all those people that I’ve already mentioned from my very formative years
Um as a child and then as a student uh and now uh as an associate professor uh leading the training for the MRC Center for Medical micology so thank you uh to all those people this is just uh one snapshot of the people who were
In the center uh last year at our annual Retreat so thank you for your attention and um I guess I need to stop screen sharing now and we can take a look at the chat and see what’s there thanks Mark that was super F absolutely fascinating um there are
There are loads of things in the chat uh and I can read some of them out to you in a in a minute with with regard to your questions but I guess now might be a good time also to mention to people if there are any other things they’d like
To ask perhaps they would like to put those in in the chat now um I can see things coming up already but we we’ll turn our attention to those in a minute perhaps if I tell you first um some of the answers that came to your question
Who were your influencers and they fall into into all sorts of different categories and I tried sort of to categorize some of them so the first ones which came shooting in on the screen were really uh people who have I field myologist and people who’ve written books about identification and
Of funy in the field so Richard for bruing um Jeff Kibby Roger Phillips Debbie Evans and several people in there get several mentions um another couple of people mentioned their father so that was nice too of course lots of people uh me mentioned academics uh such as Alan
Raina Tony lion Roy Watling um Gareth Griffith um also from the other side of the North Atlantic EO Wilson the great EO Wilson um John PEB Harry Hudson and David Ingram from Cambridge um and um also other people actually from from overseas rville gallis and the the great Juliana Fury with fungi
Foundation Natural History societies and teachers so people like Jim Cook of the the Dundee naturalists Kathleen Roberts Wakefield naturalists um the Edinburgh and and Loi and fungus group uh then they will mention of of food food people people who who run food courses or food books such as Marlo um
From Wild food Antonio carlucho books um and then other PE people also mentioned books and authors and broadcasters so Gerald D durl who you’ve already mentioned Langan hor um uh a book called in search of motopia Merlin sheldrake’s recent book on on entangled life um say I think we are in a a
Renaissance if if we can have a Renaissance um of micology at the moment because of that particular book um you know it appeared in the times top 100 best seller list it was available in airports obviously fortunate enough to be able to travel around uh and go into
An airport anywhere in the world and you’ll find it there in their W equivalent and I think that is absolutely amazing um and it’s full of stories and I think that’s why it’s so uh engaging yeah I agree great book beautifully told and the first time fungi have ever been
Hyped I think so yeah really awesome so so all sorts of different people there I guess this the sort of people you you you think but but none the nonetheless very fascinating I think think I don’t know whether you’ve got any comments on on on the uh the
Categories of of inspiration that I gave or whether you’d like me to move on to to telling you it’s clear that an awful lot of different people have inspired the audience um and I guess it’s just taking that opportunity to identify that point of ignition and you know all these
Different inputs have have led to people getting excited about fungi so the more the more little flickers there are out there then the more people will take notice absolutely and I can see even more names have been coming in since since I noted those down there what what about the the particular
Fungal stories though yes so there there’s a range of different fungal stories obviously there are some repeats um but I’ll read some of them out to you so um the first one which came in was robigo the Roman goddess of goddess of rust and again on on pathogens Urgot impact on humans LSD
Witchcraft U masas spora cadina so like your your story of of Eno muski um quite a few people mentioned micro risal fungi communication collaboration with trees things like that um scam paradoxa parasitizing cyma fungi Anda Noble different ways fungi can kill you so I think people are a bit like you there
Mark and and agree that the deathly things are quite fascinating um Byer and poly kefin well that’s a slime mobile we’ll let we’ll let that that off because if it gets people into into into real funy that’s great quite a few mentions of diversity pyus like you yes that’s a was a great
One I’m I’m up for that too um rust funy life cycle micro micro remediation um several people mention dung fungi again they’re always great fun aren’t they um fungi on sculptures pseudo scocial plates there a fun one I could written could have written that myself fogar
Mythology um and oh I should put in a plug here um Diana Richard from fungi Foundation mentions that um to remind us all that there are free resources um for for children telling children about fungi on on their website um so it’s have a big plug there for for
Fungi foundation and the question actually which came in whilst I was noting these down which I thought was an interesting one I don’t know the answer to Is there a scout or guide badge for fungi this is something that we’ve talked about at the feo uh and we
Thought that maybe there should be one but we’re not aware one there’s a natural history uh badge um but nothing specific on fungi and I think Gary who might be online he is online I think he’s got a question coming in somewhere down the list I think I noted
No I think we might oh here we go let’s have one from Gary as we mentioned his name regarding the feo committee what what do worked the best and what hasn’t worked at all that’s a question for you Mark Strong points and weak points I I think what works
Best the open doors event has worked really well for us um but we’ve run it in exitor twice now and it it it would be nice to see that extended to other centers mological research uh and there are many within the UK so that’s really um something that we’d like to see
Expanded the film festival worked amazingly in exitor um and we also had it running online one day only uh which uh was quite nice but getting that out to mainstream cemas you know we were going to give it to them for free um no cost to them and nobody took
It up I think the uh Welsh uh screening agency I can’t remember their name the the UK split up into different uh quadrants um in terms of film releases and Wales said oh yes that sounds interesting and then never followed it up um in terms of of release we have
Struggled to get business engagement so we contacted I think about 30 different businesses that are involved in fungal work um mushroom composting companies and various things um and got zero responses from anybody on that and so there are certainly some parts of the fungal equation that aren’t publicizing
What they do particularly well at the moment and and you know they’re obviously too busy there are cost imp apption there maybe IP issues all sorts of things um and it would be nice to sort of get a little bit more involvement from those yeah yeah um there’s a question
Here do you have recommendations for books on medical micology similar to blight by Emily monong do we have um I’m not aware of any um accessible books um I don’t think you count the Oxford textbook of medical micology being an easy read definitely an opening in the market
There yeah yeah um go here’s a nice one can micology take over from dinosaurs in the imagination of youngsters well the death of dinosaurs can be taken over by micology um if you like that particular narrative story yeah I suspect they might have been thinking can we in the same way as
Young kids will go for all these dinosaur books with all these great long names can we do the same for funy let’s hope we can um actually I’ll come back check on that in a minute um in my opinion it is very important to capture the interest
Of young children in fungi and I was wondering if you have any comments or ideas on how to develop educational resources for elementary school children so that is part of our review plan um we’re currently focusing on secondary schools um um but my wife is a primary school teacher and um it
It’s I was going to say it’s very endearing it’s just wonderful to see the enthusiasm from small children uh we have some lovely painting uh activities um based on using pipets to move brightly colored fluids around and to decorate uh and produce their own fungal images we have have modeling um
Activities in which they can create their own fungus based on images and stories that we’ve told so those things can work quite well but I must admit the younger the children are the more scary they are to me personally yeah a good one so there’s one here which is really I suppose for
Me actually um wanted to ask they very complimentary about the BMS Symposium um wanted to ask if if anyone can recommend any books on Decay and regeneration interested in idea of rot and rebirth it says I’m an artist not a scientist so find it difficult to read journals I
Don’t know whether you could answer that one Mark um again I’m not specifically aware that’s one of the reasons to go to a Bookshop um on my tours is that you can all always introduce people to that relevant section in the uh the Bookshop um I don’t know is is the answer and
That’s also something that’s really important in education is that there’s a huge amount that we don’t know there’s a huge amount unseen um undiscovered uh and that’s the excitement that was one of the things that or Henry descals introduced me to when I was 12 years old
Was the concept that I could be looking at new species that never been seen by science before which as a child is amazing still is amazing yeah yeah AB absolutely yeah I think that every day I I think yeah I mean I have seen one comment on there from Caroline Hobart I
Think it’s says that you’re missing the fact that most of your events are run by the groups and I am immensely indebted to the what the groups do and that’s why we’ve made sure that we do get a good interaction uh with the local groups we had over 40 different uh Regional groups
Take part in UK fungus Day last year and looking at the statistics we think around about somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people took part on UK fungus day and I think that’s you know down to the local groups and local organizers absolutely here here’s another one which I which I I I really
Agree with as far as education and Outreach is concerned surely school children must be a priority I lead lots of um fores for local Wildlife trust but my wife points out that I’m just preaching to the converted and should be directing my efforts to toward CH towards children I couldn’t agree more
And and being involved with writing a children’s book at the moment with Ali Ashby who’s also on on this call I mean I think we’d agree with that um but maybe you’d like to say something too I absolutely and um one of the committee members uh on the feo is is
Christian Taylor and I say he’s got lots of experience as a school teacher um and he’s done uh an evaluation of all of the different uh GCSE and a level curricula from all of the different examination boards and highlighted where fungal biology is present in the curriculum because it’s very hard to introduce
Something into a school if it doesn’t relate to the curriculum um and as also um suggested various activities where you could bring fungal biology into a particular story um and I say you you can do it surreptitiously that way that’s excellent because that’s also that’s answered a question by um Annabelle
Lambert which is in in the in the chat which I I won’t read out and I just remember that I spotted something earlier on when I was going through pulling out these list of um what are your favorite topics Etc um someone was asking about the new Natural History um
GCSE and whether fungi will be in uh involved in that uh and yes they most certainly will um we have representation on those committees um but as yet we don’t know uh in in in what way fungi will find theirself woven into the framework but um I’m on that committee
And hope that that they will get there um some more things coming in I’m just reading these straight away so some public and subscription Library have small Cinemas and Associated film groups that comes back to your other comment oh it’s been tricky to get public schools to adopt more fungi education into their
Curriculum um but that’s what we’re working on too in addition to our current lessons we are working on comprehensive curriculum aligned with Next Generation science standards so more schools will adopt the curriculum excellent oh here we go there’s one on Merlin shreak now Merlin shreak he does does indeed has has a
Film coming out um on iMac Big Screen Cinema called funy Web of Life narrated by Icelandic Superstar singer buor um since there will not be that many screenings I know of only one scheduled so far in the UK at the British Film Institute in the South Bank in London
Any chance of leafleting or asking the BFI to allow BMS to have a stall at these events so I guess there are two issues there or two two questions wrapped up one is Will can the film be shown in more sites um you know in small Arts house Cinemas were our particular Market
Target um and I say we were offering 40 minutes of entertainment for free and nobody wanted to take it up um maybe if we charge that might have got more people to want to come along um but I say in exitor we we sold out the
Free tickets and filled up uh the cinema um so it can be done um similarly you know I contacted every University Cinema Club in the country and got no response from any of them which is but you know um I’ve been a bit taken aback by the the
Apathy uh within the know some of the communities that we’re trying to to do stuff for um but that doesn’t mean say we shouldn’t stop and we should continue trying yeah yeah well I like this one my six-year-old grandson is almost as obsessed as I am and loves looking
Through the fungi of temperate Europe he wants his own copy well that’s good good taste there excellent taste I would say I’d quite like to look through the fungi of temperate Europe as well but not in the book uh just spend the time yeah here’s let’s see what else we
Got our children of the next generation of my colle is so important to engage with them couldn’t agree more oh there’s the Natural History GCSE coming up from Gary again um recommend someone recommending the lives of fungi a natural history of our planet’s decomposers oh yes I’d
Forgotten that I have that on my bookshelf thank you for for for for mentioning that um something here’s another one I’ll read out I ran an art exhibition with sculptures made of different substrates and grain spawn plugs uh instead of clay um the show generated great response I want to
Create another art show display in Native and local fungi isolated on Petri dishes sounds good to me yes this is I agree with this when are we going to get ecologist reports mentioning fungi well I think we we we it’s we we’ drip Fe feeding for the last
Goodness know how how many years and I think these things perhaps are just about starting to happen now you know um thanks to fungi foundation and Juliana FY uh and others we have um Flora F and funga mentioned um now now noted by iucn and that’s that’s a huge step in the
Right direction uh and various governments starting to take notice as well oh here somebody says you can order the film to local Cinema I live in Cumbria so only have an independent cinema okay so we did manage to get our film shown at the armit Museum in ellide
That was the only other place other than exitor that took the offer up right here’s another book mentioned let’s become fungal a really great book Um I like this one do we have a national mushroom if not I think think this would be good like a national flower or animal I think it would be good too and I’m sure we don’t have one think we could date for a long time though as to which
Yes yes oh just little for Merlin’s funy Web of Life film 9th 10th and 11th February um BFI IMAX waterl um comments on the uh Natural History GCSE really important it is cross-curricular and includes Arts and Humanities yes I’m not sure that it to what extent it will include Arts and
Humanities that that was mentioned I believe when we had on the last discussion so let’s hope so but it’s certainly going to be um crosscutting including uh fungi will be included along with plants and animals oh I think I’ve come to the bottom of the list now okay
Well I don’t know whether anybody else has uh any last questions but I I think if not that’s actually rather perfect timing it’s all almost um 9:00 so not far from my bedtime um so I’d like thank to thank you once again um Mark ve very much for for a great
Talk it was really great to hear your ideas and also um to thank the audience very much we had over 60 people um and many probably most people commented in in the chat uh and came up with these these these ideas of their favorite things and who their their influences
Were were and that’s really set me thinking so I think it’s great and that’s we’ve had a very nice discussion for the last half hour but I don’t know whether you’d like to say anything um finally Mark no loads of thanks in the chat there have been well I say I think
Everybody for their patience um in listening to me Ram uh in a reflective way about education um it wasn’t something that I thought about presenting before as a topic in its uh entirety so thank you very much for uh sticking with me for this time and um please everybody go out and and
Share your knowledge passion and enthusiasm uh with people that you meet well there mark just one thing has come in could you share your PowerPoint on the BMS fungal biology web pages I believe that we are recording this session um and I guess after a little
Bit of editing I’m sure that Sally would be able to uh make that available excellent so on that note thank you once again mark thank you BMS as ever and thank you audience and hope to see you all again soon bye-bye