Mysterious fungi: Researchers pinpoint hotspots of “dark taxa” across Earth’s underground ecosystems
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 7-Nov-2025 20:11 ET (8-Nov-2025 01:11 GMT/UTC)
Mycorrhizal fungi help regulate Earth’s climate and ecosystems by forming underground networks that provide plants with essential nutrients, while drawing carbon deep into soils. Scientists and conservationists have been racing to find ways to protect these underground fungi, but they keep finding dark taxa – species that are known only by their DNA sequences that can’t be linked to named or described species.
The Center for Bioenergy Innovation, or CBI, at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has promoted Melissa Cregger and Carrie Eckert to serve as chief science officers, advancing the center’s mission of innovations for new domestic biofuels, chemicals and materials.
Washington, D.C., June 2025: In a defining moment for global public health and the fight against chronic disease, more than 350 leading scientists, policy makers, ethicists, journalists and civil society representatives from over 50 countries and 150 major organizations gathered at the inaugural Human Exposome Moonshot Forum. What is expected by participants to be seen, in-time, as a historic event, this Washington, D.C. gathering marks the formal launch of a bold and globally coordinated, bottom-up initiative to map the physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial exposures that people experience during their lifetime. Known as the "exposome" experts agree that these influences account for over 80% of chronic disease today. As Professor Thomas Hartung of Johns Hopkins University, Member of the Organizing Committee and the Forum’s Host stated: “We are not promising a rocket launch to a ready destination. We are building the launchpad. The exposome is not the rocket, it is the moon. Each new data point, each discovery, is a step towards that distant but vital world where prevention replaces reaction and science empowers health.”
Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, measured changes in the levels of free amino acids, which are key to flavor, in cultured beef. Free amino acids increased during aging and were much higher than in conventional beef. The free amino acids in the cells depended on the amino acid content of the culture medium, a finding that could be used to improve the flavor of cultured meat.