Teague Appleton 2/15/26 Teague Appleton 2/15/26

FACT #3 — Humans are surprisingly closely related to fungi

If you zoom out far enough on the family tree of life, fungi are not “basically plants.” They’re actually closer to animals (including us) than they are to plants. Scientists group animals and fungi together in a big branch called Opisthokonta, which is one reason fungi show up in biology and medicine way more than most people expect. https://asm.org/articles/2021/january/three-reasons-fungi-are-not-plants

So what does “we share DNA with fungi” really mean? It doesn’t mean half of your DNA is “mushroom DNA.” It means that when scientists compare genes between species, they often find matching or related genes (called orthologs) that came from the same ancient ancestor and still do similar jobs today. That’s how researchers measure how “related” two living things are at the genetic level. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9194483/