C1 · Advanced
16 min
healthscienceenvironmentbiodiversity
Something Ate the Zombie Maker
Un hongo que se come a otro hongo
In Borneo, Malaysian researchers have identified a new fungal species that parasitizes the Ophiocordyceps fungus, the organism famous for turning ants into zombies. Fletcher and Octavio go three levels deep into what this discovery reveals about biodiversity, the global antifungal drug crisis, and how little we actually understand about fungi.
En Borneo, investigadores malayos han descubierto una nueva especie de hongo que parasita al Ophiocordyceps, el hongo que convierte a las hormigas en zombis. Fletcher y Octavio profundizan en lo que este hallazgo revela sobre la biodiversidad, la crisis global de los antifúngicos y lo poco que sabemos del reino fúngico.
7 essential C1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| hiperparásito | hyperparasite | El Pleurocordyceps es un hiperparásito que se alimenta del Ophiocordyceps antes de que este pueda liberar sus esporas. |
| entomopatógeno | entomopathogenic (organism that parasitizes insects) | Los hongos entomopatógenos se utilizan como bioinsecticidas naturales en agricultura ecológica. |
| inmunocomprometido | immunocompromised | Las infecciones fúngicas graves afectan sobre todo a pacientes inmunocomprometidos, como aquellos sometidos a quimioterapia. |
| taxonómico | taxonomic | El hallazgo tiene un valor taxonómico considerable, ya que amplía el catálogo conocido de especies fúngicas en Borneo. |
| prosperar | to thrive, to flourish | El hongo no puede prosperar en el cuerpo humano porque nuestra temperatura corporal es demasiado alta. |
| arsenal | arsenal (of resources, drugs) | El arsenal de fármacos antifúngicos es muy limitado en comparación con el de los antibióticos. |
| cobertura forestal | forest cover | Borneo ha perdido más del 30% de su cobertura forestal original desde 1970. |
Borneo handed me something this week I genuinely did not know how to categorize.
A fungus.
That eats another fungus.
That was already eating an ant.
Sí, es que cuando lo lees por primera vez parece una historia de ciencia ficción, pero es completamente real.
Yes, when you read it for the first time it sounds like science fiction, but it's completely real.
Investigadores malayos en Borneo han descubierto una nueva especie fúngica llamada Pleurocordyceps cornusynnemata, y lo que hace este organismo es parasitar al propio Ophiocordyceps, que es el hongo que ya parasita a las hormigas.
Malaysian researchers in Borneo have discovered a new fungal species called Pleurocordyceps cornusynnemata, and what this organism does is parasitize the Ophiocordyceps itself, which is the fungus that already parasitizes ants.
Right, so before we go any further, we need to establish what Ophiocordyceps actually does, because if you haven't encountered this before, the behavior is remarkable.
El Ophiocordyceps es un hongo que infecta a las hormigas, penetra en su sistema nervioso y, básicamente, toma el control de su comportamiento.
Ophiocordyceps is a fungus that infects ants, penetrates their nervous system, and basically takes control of their behavior.
La hormiga infectada abandona su colonia, trepa por una planta hasta una altura específica, se aferra a una hoja o tallo con una fuerza extraordinaria, y muere.
The infected ant leaves its colony, climbs a plant to a specific height, grips a leaf or stem with extraordinary force, and dies.
Entonces el hongo emerge del cuerpo de la hormiga y libera sus esporas desde esa posición elevada para infectar a más hormigas.
Then the fungus emerges from the ant's body and releases its spores from that elevated position to infect more ants.
The zombie ant fungus.
This is what The Last of Us is based on, the HBO show, which apparently a lot of people watched.
Exactamente, aunque en la serie lo que infecta a los humanos es una versión ficticia de este hongo.
Exactly, although in the series what infects humans is a fictional version of this fungus.
En la realidad, el Ophiocordyceps no puede infectar a seres humanos porque nuestro cuerpo mantiene una temperatura demasiado alta para que el hongo prospere.
In reality, Ophiocordyceps cannot infect humans because our body maintains a temperature too high for the fungus to thrive.
Pero la mecánica del control conductual que describe la serie sí está inspirada directamente en lo que observamos en las hormigas.
But the behavioral control mechanics the series describes are directly inspired by what we observe in ants.
Which is its own unsettling thought.
The real thing is disturbing enough.
So tell me about this new discovery, because what I found remarkable is that it isn't the zombie fungus itself that's new.
It's something that preys on it.
Eso es lo que lo convierte en un hallazgo tan interesante desde el punto de vista científico.
That's what makes it such an interesting finding from a scientific point of view.
El Pleurocordyceps cornusynnemata es un hiperparásito: un parásito de un parásito.
Pleurocordyceps cornusynnemata is a hyperparasite: a parasite of a parasite.
Crece sobre el cuerpo del Ophiocordyceps cuando este ya ha emergido del cadáver de la hormiga, y básicamente lo consume, impidiendo que ese hongo concreto libere sus esporas con éxito.
It grows on the body of the Ophiocordyceps after it has already emerged from the ant's carcass, and basically consumes it, preventing that particular fungus from successfully releasing its spores.
A natural brake on the zombie cycle.
And they also found a spider-infecting fungus that nobody had documented before.
Sí, aunque de ese segundo hongo, el que parasita arañas, aún se sabe muy poco.
Yes, although very little is still known about that second fungus, the one that parasitizes spiders.
Lo que ambos hallazgos tienen en común es que se producen en Borneo, que es uno de los ecosistemas con mayor biodiversidad del planeta, y que nos recuerdan lo incompleto que sigue siendo nuestro conocimiento del reino fúngico.
What both findings have in common is that they occur in Borneo, which is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and that they remind us how incomplete our knowledge of the fungal kingdom remains.
Let's sit with that for a second, because I think people underestimate just how little we know about fungi generally.
We've catalogued maybe a hundred thousand fungal species.
Estimates of total species on earth run to somewhere between two and four million.
Y Borneo concentra una proporción desproporcionada de esa biodiversidad desconocida.
And Borneo concentrates a disproportionate share of that unknown biodiversity.
Es una isla con una historia geológica muy particular: no ha estado conectada al continente asiático de forma continua durante millones de años, lo que ha permitido que especies enteras de plantas, animales y hongos evolucionen en aislamiento.
It's an island with a very particular geological history: it hasn't been continuously connected to the Asian continent for millions of years, which has allowed entire species of plants, animals, and fungi to evolve in isolation.
El problema es que ese mismo aislamiento se está rompiendo a un ritmo acelerado por la deforestación.
The problem is that this very isolation is being broken at an accelerating rate by deforestation.
Which means we're losing species before we even know they exist.
That's the part that keeps nagging at me when I read stories like this.
Precisamente.
Precisely.
Pero hay otra dimensión de este hallazgo que me parece aún más urgente, y es la cuestión de los antifúngicos.
But there's another dimension of this finding that I find even more urgent, and that's the question of antifungals.
Estamos viviendo una crisis silenciosa en medicina: los hongos patógenos que afectan a los humanos se están volviendo resistentes a los pocos medicamentos que tenemos para combatirlos, y el arsenal farmacológico es ridículamente pequeño comparado con el de los antibióticos.
We are living through a silent crisis in medicine: the pathogenic fungi that affect humans are becoming resistant to the few drugs we have to fight them, and the pharmacological arsenal is ridiculously small compared to antibiotics.
Walk me through that, because most people, I think, picture fungi as athlete's foot or a bread mold.
They don't think of it as a major public health threat.
Es un malentendido comprensible.
It's an understandable misunderstanding.
La realidad es que las infecciones fúngicas graves matan a más de un millón y medio de personas al año en todo el mundo, sobre todo personas inmunocomprometidas: pacientes con cáncer, personas que viven con el VIH, trasplantados.
The reality is that serious fungal infections kill more than one and a half million people a year worldwide, mainly immunocompromised people: cancer patients, people living with HIV, transplant recipients.
Y el gran problema es que solo tenemos tres clases principales de antifúngicos, mientras que para las bacterias tenemos más de veinte clases de antibióticos.
And the big problem is that we only have three main classes of antifungals, while for bacteria we have more than twenty classes of antibiotics.
Three classes.
And resistance is building against all of them.
Así es.
That's right.
La Organización Mundial de la Salud publicó en 2022 su primera lista de hongos patógenos prioritarios, lo cual, en sí mismo, es una señal de alarma: significa que la situación ha llegado a un punto en que ya no se puede ignorar.
The World Health Organization published its first priority list of pathogenic fungi in 2022, which in itself is an alarm signal: it means the situation has reached a point where it can no longer be ignored.
El Candida auris, por ejemplo, es un patógeno que surgió prácticamente de forma simultánea en cuatro continentes distintos hace menos de veinte años y que es resistente a casi todos los antifúngicos existentes.
Candida auris, for example, is a pathogen that emerged practically simultaneously on four different continents less than twenty years ago and is resistant to almost all existing antifungals.
The simultaneous emergence on four continents is what got researchers' attention early on.
That's not how pathogens normally spread.
One working theory is that climate change is warming environments that fungi previously couldn't colonize, which is its own alarming thought.
Y eso conecta directamente con por qué este descubrimiento en Borneo importa más allá del mero interés taxonómico.
And that connects directly to why this discovery in Borneo matters beyond mere taxonomic interest.
Cada vez que encontramos un hongo nuevo en un ecosistema intacto, tenemos la posibilidad de estudiar los mecanismos que usa para atacar a otros organismos, y esos mecanismos pueden convertirse en la base de nuevos fármacos.
Every time we find a new fungus in an intact ecosystem, we have the possibility of studying the mechanisms it uses to attack other organisms, and those mechanisms can become the basis for new drugs.
Algunos de los medicamentos más importantes que usamos hoy vienen de hongos.
Some of the most important medicines we use today come from fungi.
Cyclosporine is the one I always come back to.
The immunosuppressant that made organ transplants viable.
Pulled from a soil fungus in Norway in the 1970s.
If that ecosystem had been degraded before anyone went looking, we'd never have found it.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y la penicilina, que transformó la medicina del siglo XX, también vino de un hongo.
And penicillin, which transformed twentieth-century medicine, also came from a fungus.
Lo que pasa es que durante décadas nos centramos casi exclusivamente en las bacterias como fuente de nuevos antibióticos y descuidamos los hongos como fuente de tratamientos para enfermedades fúngicas, que es precisamente la laguna que ahora nos está costando caro.
What happened is that for decades we focused almost exclusively on bacteria as a source of new antibiotics and neglected fungi as a source of treatments for fungal diseases, which is precisely the gap that is now costing us dearly.
There's a research funding angle here too that I find quietly infuriating.
Fungal diseases disproportionately affect immunocompromised populations in lower-income countries.
They're not flashy.
They don't generate the same research dollars that cardiovascular disease or cancer does.
Es el problema clásico de las enfermedades desatendidas.
It's the classic problem of neglected diseases.
Afectan a quien tiene menos voz, así que reciben menos atención.
They affect those with the least voice, so they receive the least attention.
Y mientras tanto, el cambio climático está expandiendo los rangos geográficos de hongos patógenos que antes estaban confinados a zonas tropicales.
And meanwhile, climate change is expanding the geographic ranges of pathogenic fungi that were previously confined to tropical zones.
El Coccidioides, que causa la llamada 'fiebre del valle' en el suroeste de Estados Unidos, ya está apareciendo en estados donde nunca se había documentado.
Coccidioides, which causes so-called 'valley fever' in the southwestern United States, is already appearing in states where it had never been documented.
I actually covered something adjacent to that back in 2008, when I was filing from the Southwest.
Valley fever was already on the rise then, and doctors in states like California were seeing cases in patients who had never left the country, never traveled anywhere exotic.
It was local.
And physicians weren't diagnosing it because they weren't looking for it.
Eso ilustra perfectamente otro problema: el diagnóstico.
That perfectly illustrates another problem: diagnosis.
Las infecciones fúngicas son notoriamente difíciles de diagnosticar porque sus síntomas se solapan con los de muchas otras enfermedades, y los médicos de regiones no tropicales no están entrenados para pensar en hongos como posibles causas.
Fungal infections are notoriously difficult to diagnose because their symptoms overlap with many other diseases, and doctors in non-tropical regions are not trained to think of fungi as possible causes.
Se calcula que hasta el 80% de las muertes por infecciones fúngicas graves ocurren en países sin acceso a diagnósticos adecuados.
It is estimated that up to 80% of deaths from serious fungal infections occur in countries without access to adequate diagnostics.
Now bring me back to the Borneo discovery.
Because beyond the drug pipeline question, there's a specific angle here about biological control that I find genuinely exciting.
Sí, y es un campo que está ganando mucha tracción.
Yes, and it's a field that is gaining a lot of traction.
La idea es usar el propio Pleurocordyceps, o compuestos derivados de él, para controlar poblaciones de Ophiocordyceps de forma natural, sin pesticidas sintéticos.
The idea is to use Pleurocordyceps itself, or compounds derived from it, to control Ophiocordyceps populations naturally, without synthetic pesticides.
Esto tiene aplicaciones potenciales en agricultura, donde los hongos entomopatógenos, es decir, los que parasitan insectos, se usan ya como bioinsecticidas.
This has potential applications in agriculture, where entomopathogenic fungi, that is, those that parasitize insects, are already used as bioinsecticides.
A parasite to control a parasite.
There's something almost elegant about that logic, even if it also sounds like the setup for a disaster movie.
La naturaleza ya lleva millones de años haciendo exactamente eso.
Nature has been doing exactly that for millions of years.
Los hiperparásitos son más comunes de lo que pensamos: hay avispas que parasitan a otros parásitos de orugas, hay virus que infectan a bacterias que a su vez infectan a organismos más grandes.
Hyperparasites are more common than we think: there are wasps that parasitize other caterpillar parasites, there are viruses that infect bacteria that in turn infect larger organisms.
Es una lógica evolutiva muy estable.
It's a very stable evolutionary logic.
Lo que hacen estos investigadores es identificarla, documentarla y luego ver si podemos aprovecharla.
What these researchers do is identify it, document it, and then see if we can harness it.
Let's talk about Malaysia's scientific community for a moment, because I think this gets overlooked.
This wasn't a discovery by a team from a European or North American university parachuting into Borneo.
These are Malaysian researchers working on Malaysian biodiversity.
Es un punto importante.
It's an important point.
Malasia ha invertido de forma sostenida en investigación biológica local durante las últimas dos décadas, precisamente porque tiene el incentivo directo de que su biodiversidad está en riesgo.
Malaysia has invested steadily in local biological research over the last two decades, precisely because it has the direct incentive that its biodiversity is at risk.
Cuando el conocimiento sobre la naturaleza de un lugar lo producen investigadores del propio lugar, hay una continuidad, una presencia en el campo, que es imposible de replicar con expediciones periódicas desde fuera.
When knowledge about the nature of a place is produced by researchers from that same place, there is a continuity, a presence in the field, that is impossible to replicate with periodic expeditions from outside.
And the deforestation pressure in Malaysian Borneo, particularly for palm oil, is one of the more documented environmental stories of the last thirty years.
The tension between economic development and that research base is real and unresolved.
No resuelta y, me temo, que se inclinando cada vez más en la dirección equivocada.
Unresolved and, I'm afraid, tilting increasingly in the wrong direction.
Se estima que Borneo ha perdido más del 30% de su cobertura forestal desde 1970.
It is estimated that Borneo has lost more than 30% of its forest cover since 1970.
Y cada hectárea de selva que se convierte en plantación de palma lleva consigo organismos que nadie ha catalogado, compuestos que nadie ha analizado, interacciones ecológicas que nunca llegaremos a entender.
And every hectare of jungle converted into a palm oil plantation takes with it organisms no one has catalogued, compounds no one has analyzed, ecological interactions we will never come to understand.
The medical cost of that is incalculable.
We literally don't know what we're losing, which makes it impossible to argue the case in economic terms, and economics is the language that actually moves policy.
Aunque algunos economistas han intentado cuantificarlo, por supuesto.
Although some economists have tried to quantify it, of course.
Si atribuyes un valor hipotético a los compuestos farmacológicos potenciales que podrían derivarse de la biodiversidad de Borneo, los números son astronómicos.
If you assign a hypothetical value to the potential pharmacological compounds that could be derived from Borneo's biodiversity, the numbers are astronomical.
Pero es una especulación, y en política, la especulación pierde contra el ingreso tangible de hoy.
But it's speculation, and in politics, speculation loses against today's tangible revenue.
That is a genuinely depressing structural problem.
Short-term extraction versus long-term discovery.
One of those has a lobby;
the other one doesn't.
Aunque algo está cambiando, y hay que reconocerlo.
Although something is changing, and it has to be acknowledged.
El acuerdo de Kunming-Montreal de 2022 establece como objetivo proteger el 30% de la superficie terrestre y marina del planeta para 2030.
The Kunming-Montreal agreement of 2022 sets a target to protect 30% of the world's land and ocean surface by 2030.
No es suficiente y el cumplimiento es irregular, pero al menos hay un marco legal internacional que intenta articular exactamente este argumento: que la biodiversidad tiene un valor intrínseco que va más allá de lo que podemos medir hoy.
It's not enough and compliance is uneven, but at least there is an international legal framework that tries to articulate exactly this argument: that biodiversity has an intrinsic value that goes beyond what we can measure today.
Pull back and look at the full picture for me.
A new fungus found in Borneo.
A hyperparasite.
What should someone walk away from this episode actually understanding?
Que este hallazgo es un síntoma de tres cosas simultáneas: primero, que la biodiversidad fúngica sigue siendo una de las grandes fronteras científicas inexploradas;
That this finding is a symptom of three simultaneous things: first, that fungal biodiversity remains one of the great unexplored scientific frontiers;
segundo, que estamos en un momento crítico para la medicina de las infecciones fúngicas, con resistencias crecientes y un arsenal terapéutico escaso;
second, that we are at a critical moment for the medicine of fungal infections, with growing resistance and a scarce therapeutic arsenal;
y tercero, que el ritmo al que destruimos los ecosistemas donde viven estos organismos supera con creces al ritmo al que los estudiamos.
and third, that the rate at which we destroy the ecosystems where these organisms live far exceeds the rate at which we study them.
Three levels.
What's there, why it matters, and what the clock looks like.
That's the story.
Y por cierto, Fletcher, no sé si te has fijado, pero he usado varias veces la palabra 'hiperparásito' durante esta conversación, y me pregunto si entiendes por qué en español se construye así, con ese prefijo.
And by the way, Fletcher, I don't know if you noticed, but I've used the word 'hyperparasite' several times in this conversation, and I wonder if you understand why in Spanish it's constructed that way, with that prefix.
Hiper.
I know hiper from hipermercado, which is a supermarket on steroids.
Beyond the normal thing.
So hiperparásito is a parasite above a parasite.
Eso es.
That's right.
El prefijo 'hiper' viene del griego y significa 'sobre' o 'en exceso de'.
The prefix 'hiper' comes from Greek and means 'above' or 'in excess of'.
En español lo encontrarás en palabras como 'hipérbole', que es una exageración literaria, 'hipertensión', que es una presión arterial excesiva, o 'hiperactivo'.
In Spanish you'll find it in words like 'hipérbole', which is a literary exaggeration, 'hipertensión', which is excessive blood pressure, or 'hiperactivo'.
Lo interesante es que en español y en inglés este prefijo griego funciona casi de forma idéntica, lo cual facilita mucho la vida cuando encuentras vocabulario técnico o científico.
The interesting thing is that in Spanish and in English this Greek prefix works almost identically, which makes life much easier when you encounter technical or scientific vocabulary.
False friends, I know, can go the other way and destroy you.
But shared Greek roots are basically free vocabulary.
Somebody should have told me that before I started this whole project.
Te lo habría dicho antes, pero necesitaba que cometieras suficientes errores primero para que la lección tuviese peso.
I would have told you sooner, but I needed you to make enough mistakes first so the lesson would carry weight.
Es pedagogía, Fletcher.
It's pedagogy, Fletcher.