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Information Systems in Soils

Some mycorrhizal hyphae (the filaments of the mycelium; think "tubes") can have relatively enormous internal diameters. Some are large enough to allow the flow of free RNA through the network. Ribonucleic Acid has the same information encoding capacity as DNA. That's quite a bit of potential information flowing around every cubic centimeter of soil.

It doesn't end there as whole viruses can traverse the fungal networks as well. The amount of information contained there is mammoth. Even whole fungal nuclei containing an average of 3.5 million base pairs (the A, G, T, Cs of DNA) can travel freely through the network. That's the amount of information that a 2,800 page book can hold.

These networks are huge, yet localized Internets of the planet. What would happen if all these networks connect?

#Alexandria

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Discussion

Jacob (Organix Farms) 11mo ago

Also Add the neural connections through neuralink. We then have God Mode.

smallworlnd 11mo ago

Pretty rad isn't it?! You've got the core idea but I can't help but ackchually you on a couple technical details

Multi-cellular fungi like the mycorrhiza you mentioned typically have genome sizes in the range of 35 million base pairs or more. Fungi in the range of 3.5 million are small single-celled yeasts. For reference, baker's yeast has about 12 million. The second point is that RNA are functional elements almost always derived from some DNA blueprint that can do all sorts of things depending on internal and external conditions. They're very small molecules whereas the diameters of mycorrhizal filaments are large enough to fit all sorts of stuff. It's really astounding the quantity and size of things they can transport--including viruses and other microbes!

Nunya Bidness 11mo ago

RNA folding into functional enzyme-like structures wasn’t something I felt was right for that note, but yeah. RNA does some pretty fantastic stuff.

Thank you for the correction on my decimal place. Could’ve been worse: Goggle’s AI thinks they are 150 mbp to 750 mbp.

smallworlnd 11mo ago

😂🫡🫂