Some Amanita mushrooms contain the a chemical called amavadin, which binds vanadium more strongly than anything else we know of. This could help us make, of all things, grid-scale batteries. We're going to go deep on this in our next full length video, so mark your calendars for early November-ish.
Here's a spoiler-free article about the mushroom side of this, our deep dive in November will be about how vanadium flow batteries work and their potential for large scale energy storage. cen.acs.org/energy/energy-storage-/Poisonous-mushroom-compound-help-flow/97/web/2019/04
@@ACSReactionsI may be wrong, but isn't Silibinin already approved as an antidote for amanitin poisoning? I think it also works by blocking the amanitin uptake into the hepatocytes.
@@jonahhumkamp1032 Is "silibinin" related to to psylocibin; the active ingredient in magic mushrooms? Aminitia are those red and white Christmas mushrooms that have some sort of DMT,analog?
An unrelated mushroom in the genus _Galerina,_ -- _Galerina marginata_ -- also contains amatoxins. It looks _a little_ (very superficially) like genus _Psilocybe_ mushrooms in the section Cyanescens. So if you're going to go out looking for "wavy caps" ( _Ps. cyanescens_ ), it's a good idea to acquainte yourself with the appearance of _Galerina marginata,_ which, BTW, does fruit in the same sort of wood debris substrates as the so-called wood-lover _Psilocybe_ species. These _Amanita_ genus mushrooms mentioned here actually _do not_ smell especially bad, so that's no way to identify them. And by many accounts, they actually cook up quite tasty. People should keep in mind that there are very deadly plants as well. Mushrooms are not uniquely hazardous -- just don't go eating things if you don't know what they are.
Galerina mushrooms do not bruise blue like virtually all known psilocybe species, so there's one way to help tell them apart. Galerina are also sometimes confused with honey mushrooms but honey mushrooms have bright white spores and galerina have brown spores. This conversation also makes me wonder if anybody has figured out what the chemical mechanism behind "wood-lovers paralysis" which sometimes occurs when people eat mushrooms that are growing on parasitized or dead wood.
An estimated ⅓ of all plants produce cyanide, for example. Such foods as apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches, apricots and almonds all contain low levels of it in their seeds. A couple of cups full of apple seeds, ground and eaten in one meal, can kill you.
@@RWBHere , fruit seeds and pits can be deadly for small dogs; if they chew them first the cyanide gets released more efficiently, and if they don't chew the pit into pieces then an intestinal obstruction is possible. One of my Anatolian Shepherds swallowed a small plum pit recently without chewing it but she's over 100 pounds and the pit apparently passed right through her without incident, although lately she likes to chew acorns, which have had a bumper crop this fall, the likes of which I've never seen before.
@@goodun2974 - _G. marginata_ also _feels_ really different from section cyan mushrooms. The wood-lovers have a distinctive toughness to them. I could sort a mixed pile of both blindfolded, pretty surem Some Kiwi _Psilocybe_ enthusiasts assert that the various section cyanescens (section subaeruginosa, if you're an Australian mycologist) species in New Zealand are more likely to cause wood-lovers paralysis from particular patches, or particular areas -- like: *" ... don't eat the **_Ps. weraroa_** on this hill here, they're way more likely to cause WLP* So that's interesting. Some of them are quite confident that it has something to do with the substrate -- although I suppose it's also genetic, particularly considering that wood-eating _Ps. ovoidiocystidiata_ doesn't seem to ever cause WLP; it's not related to the wood-lovers (more closely related to _Ps. cubensis_ ) but can occasionally be found in the autumn fruiting right next to cyans. It likes the same substrates. No one knows for sure what particular compound causes WLP, as far as I know. Some folks suspect it could be _aeruginascin._ If one could find aeruginascin in species that never cause WLP, that would probably rule that out.
@@RWBHere - There's also _Toxicoscordion venenosum_ -- the Death Camas. It's occasionally mistaken for wild onion. Quite toxic indeed. And of course one should avoid chewing up and swallowing castor beans, as ricin is definitely not good for one's health.
This is the first video I’ve seen of your channel and I paused in the middle to say I appreciate your dedication to science and safety. As a scientist and engineer I find the emphasis on honesty through your jokes lucidating, and thank you for being on my team
The problem with death caps is that the poison starts being symptomatic too late to save the person who ate it, already damaging the liver and other organs
The most important information was not heard. This antidote will not help almost anyone. "If the antidote is given within four hours." That is the problem. You will not know that you are poisoned until 12 hours after ingestion. Death cap poison dissolves liver. At the time you start feeling sick, your liver has already turned into slurry. The only hope is liver transplantation. In my country is mushroom picking and eating very common and we love it. The genus amanita contains several edible and very tasty species. I personally love one type roasted on a campfire. The death cap is, espetially when young, a bit similar to other edible species and people who survived poisoning report its taste is delicious. Therefore you have absolutely no suspition that you have been poisoned until it is too late.
Silymarin, the extract of the milk thistle, containing silibinin, is used as somewhat effective antidot, protecting the liver cells by competition for the receptors. The green death cap and the white destroying angle, as well as the fools mushrooms are not described as tasting bad or Snelling bad, which increases danger. The yellow and the citric yellow variants are tasting bad, but less toxic
I had to treat someone who ingested these once. It was one of the only times I've had someone well enough to talk to me with clear mind, but also be 100% certain they were going to die soon. It was bizarre and tragic. An antidote would be huge; alas most poisonings are accidental and result from mis-identification of common edible species... and concerning symptoms prompting treatment don't generally begin until many hours later (I want to say 12-36, but I don't have a reference in front of me). I fear this 4 hour window will not be wide enough for the majority of patients. At least it's something though.
Very cool new investigative technique though, and I absolutely love the level of detail (and exhaustive references - yes I actually checked those 😂) you bring to this video. Just when I was getting bored of the algorithms offerings, I think I have a new back catalogue to explore now...
Most people will barely even get a tummy ache in this time window with this sort of poisoning. Even when they do, they usually feel better soon thereafter even as their liver is silently becoming compromised.
@@ACSReactions, People are sometimes unknowingly poisoned by destroying angel mushrooms because in their infancy they can look very much like certain varieties of tasty edible puff balls. If you slice the false "puffball" open, however, you can see the beginnings of the button or bulbous amanita mushroom inside.
The standard treatment for AMA is a high dose of milk thistle (genus silybum) and a huge dose of penicillin G. This has to be with constant monitoring for kidney and liver damage.
A future video may also benefit from an explanation of binding affinity too. For example, buprenorphine - it has a much better binding affinity than narcan, so a buprenorphine overdose cannot be reversed by naloxone
It can, as common active-site receptor-ligand interactions are reversible, chemical equilibrium reactions: You just need a lot more narcan to shift the equilibrium to the desired outcome (Le Chatelier's principle). Buprenorphine OD is kinda rare though (except in opioid-naive people), since it has a ceiling on its Emax.
Why is it so important the mushroom hunter be trained to help you find *toxic* mushrooms? That's when it's fine to use an amateur mushroom hunter -- nothing bad happens if you accidentally come back with non-toxic mushrooms.
Saying cyanide turns hydroxocobalamin into vitamin B12 might be a confusing statement. Since hydroxocobalamin is already vitamin B12, and a naturally occuring form with higher transport molecule affinity than cyanocobalamin. Cyanocobalamin is a manufactured form of B12 used in supplementation because it is more stable, but not an active form of B12 and has to be converted in the body first back to hydroxocobalamin and then to adenosyl- and methylcobalamin.
Does the conversion from Cyanocobalamin to Hydroxocobalamin release cyanide or is it done through another mechanism? I'm sure in the case of its use as an antidote the amounts present are high enough for your body to release them in the urine instead of converting them, but that isn't always how the liver works (I mean, it mostly just tries converting the compound to be better excreted). It's an interesting thought (clearly the antidote works though so it must either be peed out unconverted or converted without releasing cyanide.)
@@unoriginal1086 As far as I'm aware cyanocobalamin is either excreted or converter to other forms of cobalamin, releasing the cyano group into the blood stream, this is then converted into thiocyanate and excreted. I imagine this isn't bad because this conversion happens slowly and gradually. And since you take a very large dose of hydroxocobalamin, cobalamin levels in the blood will be very high, and since hydroxocobalamin has higher affinity for transport molecules a lot of cyanocobalamin will be excreted.
10:00 "It would cost thousand possibly tens of thousands for a single experiment" NileRed could do it; he spent about $5,000 in reagents to make the worlds purest cookie. A... singular, one cookie five grand. Or when he made a "grill" out of four bars of pure gold. Just get more subscribers and a patrion and you can do thousand dollar experiments!
In poland this family of mushrooms is called muchomory, it literally means fly-death. Cause of this smell it was used back in a day to kill flies - it was sprinkled with sugar, flies would lick sugar and die :D
I remember being a child, being shown this mushroom by by uncle scared the shit out of me, like it could hop into my mouth by itself to kill me. These days it seems rarer in the woods around where i live, dunno why
There is no shortage of Amanita species mushrooms in Southern New England, both the destroying angel and the brightly colored red or yellow amanita muacaria which isn't necessarily deadly poisonous but can make you quite sick and can cause some extremely unpleasant hallucinations so it's classified as a deliriant and not as a hallucinogenic. They are quite beautiful to photograph and are best appreciated that way!
@@losfogo7149 , People have reported extremely variable effects from Muscaria; some people say it can be pleasant if prepared and processed properly beforehand, while others say it's more like a feverish nightmare dream. The mushrooms themselves may vary widely in chemical makeup, and so I think I'll pass! One guy I spoke to said that a friend of his had tried Big Laughing Gym, which purportedly contains ibotene and muscarine, and the only effect he had was several hours of leg paralysis.
@@losfogo7149 Do not eat Amanita muscaria with any amount of praparation. It'll just make you sick and hallucinate. There is an edible amanita called the Blusher, which is said to be harmless and tasty when cooked, but it looks quite similar to the really toxic Amanita pantherina, so I am not risking it.
Overall, very nice video with good contemporary science. As someone who spent a number of years working on amatoxins and other cyclic peptide mushroom toxins, just wanted to point out a small error. Amatoxins do not impact protein synthesis directly but rather inhibit RNA polymerase II, which causes the cessation of transcription of protein coding genes.
Thanks for the news, but I do want to say one thing. There have been a few rare cases where a pre-approved drug with wide usage had been unapproved for a specific use. I doubt that will be the case here, namely because poison research is often too complicated for such bureaucracy.
I love this stuff! Aren’t there’s other medical dyes that are also antidotes? Prussian Blue? I think I remember that being an antidote for something. 🤔
According to Wikipedia, Prussian Blue can be used in Thallium poisoning, radioactive cesium and to indicate a disease I know nothing about, G6PD deficiency. Another dye, methylene blue can cause hemolytic anemia in people with G6PD deficiency. But methylene blue has been used to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, cyanide poisoning, and malaria.Its main use as a medicine today is treatment of Methemoglobinemia which can give the skin a blue color and make the blood chocolatey brown. Medication reactions seem to be the most common cause, but there is a recessive gene possessed by the Fugate family who often had two copies of the gene due to inbreeding. Kind of neat that a blue dye turned smurfy blue people pinkish. If I remember correctly, too much of the dye can actually cause Methemoglobinemia. I became interested in the dye years ago looking for a cheap monoamine oxidase inhibitor to use instead of the obscenely expensive one I take for depression. Fortunately my medicine's price is merely R-rated now because the dye doesn't appear to be a good substitute. I think there may be a smattering of research suggesting it might extend lifespan. A shame because I had thought peeing blue would make a neat party trick.
Studied microbiology at University. Our 2nd year involved an Autumn fungal foray, rummaging around the forest in Surrey and collecting macro-fungi. We brought them back to the lab for identification. Really great day!
That's pretty interesting, specially considering the majority of death by mushrooms are from the amanita family. One question tho, could they find one better chemical that has a better survival rate, for exemple, and what would it take to get it approved?
Well it's super awesome that there's progress in a treatment for those who have been exposed to these mushrooms, but what about the fact that most people don't realize that the mushroom is killing them until they are almost dead several weeks later? I think the bigger breakthrough here is just proving out this piece of technology for creating antidotes rather than this specific antidote. I liked your show please keep doing it.
The little bit of humor infused in this video got me rolling. Although I do believe will be missed by many not paying enough attention. Great video informative and funny.
Each year whole families die from eating poison mushrooms, I never ever eat food with mushroom in it unless I for a fact know it was mushroom bought from a store. Not market, not anything like that, from a store. And I bought them myself and made the food or oversaw the making of the food.
The problem with X-ray crystallography is that many proteins cannot be crystallized, aswell as the crystal structure not matching protein conformation under physiological conditions. Cryoelectronmicroscopy is a better fit most of the time nowadays.
Another poignant reason why I have never liked or eaten mushrooms. Thanks for the very entertaining lesson. You really put some work into this and it shows!
As someone who loves to pick mushrooms and lives in a place that mostly only has death caps and russula aeruginea (very similar mushrooms at first glance), I think this is amazing news.
Russula and amanita are really hard to confuse - the large group of gilled mushrooms separates into two major orders - and russula belongs to one, amanita to the other large order. They are easily to distinguish if you want to learn. It's like distinguishing conifers from sea weeds. If you want to collect mushrooms yourself for eating, you should really learn to distinguish those two orders first.
@@w1darr I've been picking these mushrooms for decades, of course you can see which one is which if you have the experience. The problem is that not everyone does and they have many similarities: shape, color, size... I have to pay so much attention when I'm with someone else, or I just ban them from picking them up entirely, which is a shame, because they're extremely delicious.
It's so fascinating that I've only been recommended this channel recently evert though I watch a lot of chemistry and science explained videos. Maybe the algorithm is trying out new ideas!
The TH-cam algorithms frequently recommend videos to me that I have no interest in whatsoever, or sometimes actively dislike, and they continually hit me with ads that are obnoxious and offensive and not for products that I have any interest in. In short the TH-cam and Google algorithms suck, truly and completely.
Nice video - just found out about this channel , and you earned my subscription especially because of the reference list attached as a google doc. I'm an ex-scientist that worked on x-ray crystallography (does that really exists: ex-scientist ? ) - I just moved to another field and now dealing with software based financial crime detection.
My grandmother’s name was Juanita and she had a million nieces and nephews ( slight exaggeration) so it was aunt Juanita. Said in a southern accent it came out as An-Juanita . A neighbor thought her name was Amanita and I’d giggle every time she said that and tease my gram about being toxic (she wasn’t )
Remember, kids! The mushrooms are just fruiting bodies. The fungus itself is a brain-like mat of mycelium that can spread over miles. This is their planet, not ours!
It is very interesting that Amanitins also contain in their structure a fragment of the amino acids tryptophan, containing an indole cycle like this dye. In any case, this substance can be the starting point for creating more effective antidotes to combat mushroom poisoning. It would be even more interesting to create a vaccine, for example, by connecting amanitin with a fairly large protein or glycoprotein, capable of causing immune response. How hard it is in relation to such short cyclic peptides a big question, but in the case of poisoning with such substances, symptoms may not appear immediately and therefore the use of antidotes can be ineffective.
M. Sc. of chemistry here... I performed lots of X-ray crystallography (better: powder diffractometry). You cannot imagine the work! And solving the structures of my substances had been hard as well because I had a microcrystalline powder and no single crystals!😂
I can't imagine eating a dubious mushroom in a survival situation, but saving one so that I could then just walking out of the woods and into a hospital to identify the mushroom for them and get the antidote.
And this may be what Dr Bastien in France may have fortuitously discovered in 1957. This was a combination of IV Vitamin C, and per os nifuroxazide and dihydrostreptomycin at usual posology.
I have my doubts about that "trained mushroom hunter" of yours if he recommend you to smell those mushrooms. Even their spores contain the poison, you really don't want to inhale them. And even if you did not actually smell them, what you did was not really setting up safe example. Also a note on your conclusion: when you start feeling bad after eating Amanita mushrooms, it's usually already too late. It takes longer than four hours for that to happen with these mushrooms.
Well buddy... Alan Rockefeller a well respected mushroom king regularly tells people that all mushrooms are safe to taste... keyword taste not eat. Dose makes the poison
I once cooked ate some green potatoes accidentally, (it was dark), felt really bad afterwards, once i realise d why I rang the NHS for advice. This was a Saturday, she took my number said she'd speak to the toxicology people. Rang me back later and said the toxicology dept was closed for the weekend and as it was a Bank holiday, could they call me back on Tuesday. anyway, I though Milk thistle (Silymarin ) or maybe NAC was pretty good against amanita.
Fascinating storytelling. Quite an anti-climax in the end. Reduced mortality by 50% (only) if taken at least 4 hours before the poisoning. Next steps need to enter the story. Now scientists are trying to modify this molecule to improve its binding affinity and overall efficacy. It will take them at least 2 years (or rather forever) to propose better candidates and move to trials in primates.
Computing power is going up at a fast rate. AMD just announced a 96 core 192 tread desktop CPU that runs at around 5 Ghz. combining that with an evolution algorithm could narrow down the options much faster. If they got a rack full of these maybe with a bunch of GPUs as well you might see results sooner. But yes testing this will be not be fast.
Yeah, but this is with a drug that already exists. Modifying it to be more effective could lead to significantly higher efficacy, and also mouse metabolism is faster than human due to their smaller size so that four hour window could be a lot longer in humans (plus it could be longer with a modified, more effective chemical). The idea of using pre-approved drugs for antidote research is interesting but I honestly doubt a miracle antidote like narcan would be discovered being used for something else because of how specific the usage is. Hopefully by using related compounds and in humans not mice, the mortality rate will be much lower and the time window will be extended.
Very enjoyable - thanks! I have eaten amanitas, but A. caesarea rather than phalloides. They were OK, but nothing to write home about - I think most of their cachet comes from the name.
no because the antidote doesn't actually disable the poison, it just blocks the receptors in your body that the poison normally will effect. Basically it makes it so the poison can't hurt you long enough for your body to get rid of it. In this case, it isn't super effective because it only blocks the poison from entering the cells where they do more damage and it relies on your body to get rid of it, so it will still cause significant harm and can only work in a short window of time. But still, everything helps and if it can save even one life it's of course worth it!
Some Amanita mushrooms contain the a chemical called amavadin, which binds vanadium more strongly than anything else we know of. This could help us make, of all things, grid-scale batteries. We're going to go deep on this in our next full length video, so mark your calendars for early November-ish.
holy shit wtf can you please post a paper for a bit of spoilers
Here's a spoiler-free article about the mushroom side of this, our deep dive in November will be about how vanadium flow batteries work and their potential for large scale energy storage.
cen.acs.org/energy/energy-storage-/Poisonous-mushroom-compound-help-flow/97/web/2019/04
that was a really interesting read thank you!@@ACSReactions
@@ACSReactionsI may be wrong, but isn't Silibinin already approved as an antidote for amanitin poisoning? I think it also works by blocking the amanitin uptake into the hepatocytes.
@@jonahhumkamp1032 Is "silibinin" related to to psylocibin; the active ingredient in magic mushrooms? Aminitia are those red and white Christmas mushrooms that have some sort of DMT,analog?
3:00
if it bites you and you die: venomous.
If you bite it an you die: poisonous.
If both bite each other and no one dies: kinky.
An unrelated mushroom in the genus _Galerina,_ -- _Galerina marginata_ -- also contains amatoxins. It looks _a little_ (very superficially) like genus _Psilocybe_ mushrooms in the section Cyanescens. So if you're going to go out looking for "wavy caps" ( _Ps. cyanescens_ ), it's a good idea to acquainte yourself with the appearance of _Galerina marginata,_ which, BTW, does fruit in the same sort of wood debris substrates as the so-called wood-lover _Psilocybe_ species.
These _Amanita_ genus mushrooms mentioned here actually _do not_ smell especially bad, so that's no way to identify them. And by many accounts, they actually cook up quite tasty.
People should keep in mind that there are very deadly plants as well. Mushrooms are not uniquely hazardous -- just don't go eating things if you don't know what they are.
Galerina mushrooms do not bruise blue like virtually all known psilocybe species, so there's one way to help tell them apart. Galerina are also sometimes confused with honey mushrooms but honey mushrooms have bright white spores and galerina have brown spores. This conversation also makes me wonder if anybody has figured out what the chemical mechanism behind "wood-lovers paralysis" which sometimes occurs when people eat mushrooms that are growing on parasitized or dead wood.
An estimated ⅓ of all plants produce cyanide, for example. Such foods as apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches, apricots and almonds all contain low levels of it in their seeds. A couple of cups full of apple seeds, ground and eaten in one meal, can kill you.
@@RWBHere , fruit seeds and pits can be deadly for small dogs; if they chew them first the cyanide gets released more efficiently, and if they don't chew the pit into pieces then an intestinal obstruction is possible. One of my Anatolian Shepherds swallowed a small plum pit recently without chewing it but she's over 100 pounds and the pit apparently passed right through her without incident, although lately she likes to chew acorns, which have had a bumper crop this fall, the likes of which I've never seen before.
@@goodun2974 -
_G. marginata_ also _feels_ really different from section cyan mushrooms. The wood-lovers have a distinctive toughness to them. I could sort a mixed pile of both blindfolded, pretty surem
Some Kiwi _Psilocybe_ enthusiasts assert that the various section cyanescens (section subaeruginosa, if you're an Australian mycologist) species in New Zealand are more likely to cause wood-lovers paralysis from particular patches, or particular areas -- like: *" ... don't eat the **_Ps. weraroa_** on this hill here, they're way more likely to cause WLP*
So that's interesting. Some of them are quite confident that it has something to do with the substrate -- although I suppose it's also genetic, particularly considering that wood-eating _Ps. ovoidiocystidiata_ doesn't seem to ever cause WLP; it's not related to the wood-lovers (more closely related to _Ps. cubensis_ ) but can occasionally be found in the autumn fruiting right next to cyans. It likes the same substrates.
No one knows for sure what particular compound causes WLP, as far as I know. Some folks suspect it could be _aeruginascin._ If one could find aeruginascin in species that never cause WLP, that would probably rule that out.
@@RWBHere - There's also _Toxicoscordion venenosum_ -- the Death Camas. It's occasionally mistaken for wild onion. Quite toxic indeed.
And of course one should avoid chewing up and swallowing castor beans, as ricin is definitely not good for one's health.
"You get to chat with a toxicologist, which I personally always enjoy" is the most scientist thing to say at the end of a video
Psychedelics are just an amazing discovery. It's quite fascinating how effective they are for depression and stress..saved my life.
I'm feeling the same way too. I put so much on my plate and it definitelv affects mv stress and anxietv levels
This is the first video I’ve seen of your channel and I paused in the middle to say I appreciate your dedication to science and safety. As a scientist and engineer I find the emphasis on honesty through your jokes lucidating, and thank you for being on my team
Same here.
The problem with death caps is that the poison starts being symptomatic too late to save the person who ate it, already damaging the liver and other organs
The most important information was not heard. This antidote will not help almost anyone. "If the antidote is given within four hours." That is the problem. You will not know that you are poisoned until 12 hours after ingestion. Death cap poison dissolves liver. At the time you start feeling sick, your liver has already turned into slurry. The only hope is liver transplantation.
In my country is mushroom picking and eating very common and we love it. The genus amanita contains several edible and very tasty species. I personally love one type roasted on a campfire. The death cap is, espetially when young, a bit similar to other edible species and people who survived poisoning report its taste is delicious. Therefore you have absolutely no suspition that you have been poisoned until it is too late.
That was my immediate reaction too. People who get lower doses can last up to a month before it actually suddenly becomes a problem for them.
very much enjoyed this video. fascinating stuff!
thanks, jesus
Thanks, jesus
Great video, but I really hate how you don't leave the text on the screen long enough to read.
As we Czech people say, all mushrooms are edible. Some, only once.
Silymarin, the extract of the milk thistle, containing silibinin, is used as somewhat effective antidot, protecting the liver cells by competition for the receptors. The green death cap and the white destroying angle, as well as the fools mushrooms are not described as tasting bad or Snelling bad, which increases danger. The yellow and the citric yellow variants are tasting bad, but less toxic
Very nice job, although the ending seemed abrupt. Fungi are truly amazing little chemical factories. Thank you for sharing.
I had to treat someone who ingested these once. It was one of the only times I've had someone well enough to talk to me with clear mind, but also be 100% certain they were going to die soon. It was bizarre and tragic. An antidote would be huge; alas most poisonings are accidental and result from mis-identification of common edible species... and concerning symptoms prompting treatment don't generally begin until many hours later (I want to say 12-36, but I don't have a reference in front of me). I fear this 4 hour window will not be wide enough for the majority of patients. At least it's something though.
Very cool new investigative technique though, and I absolutely love the level of detail (and exhaustive references - yes I actually checked those 😂) you bring to this video. Just when I was getting bored of the algorithms offerings, I think I have a new back catalogue to explore now...
Most people will barely even get a tummy ache in this time window with this sort of poisoning. Even when they do, they usually feel better soon thereafter even as their liver is silently becoming compromised.
The four hour window is in mice, the hope is that we'll have more time in humans. Thanks for sharing that story, that must have been tough.
Last month in Australia there was a family that ate a poisonous mushroom feast feed to them at by the host of the family gathering they were having.
@@ACSReactions, People are sometimes unknowingly poisoned by destroying angel mushrooms because in their infancy they can look very much like certain varieties of tasty edible puff balls. If you slice the false "puffball" open, however, you can see the beginnings of the button or bulbous amanita mushroom inside.
The standard treatment for AMA is a high dose of milk thistle (genus silybum) and a huge dose of penicillin G. This has to be with constant monitoring for kidney and liver damage.
A future video may also benefit from an explanation of binding affinity too. For example, buprenorphine - it has a much better binding affinity than narcan, so a buprenorphine overdose cannot be reversed by naloxone
It can, as common active-site receptor-ligand interactions are reversible, chemical equilibrium reactions: You just need a lot more narcan to shift the equilibrium to the desired outcome (Le Chatelier's principle). Buprenorphine OD is kinda rare though (except in opioid-naive people), since it has a ceiling on its Emax.
Why is it so important the mushroom hunter be trained to help you find *toxic* mushrooms? That's when it's fine to use an amateur mushroom hunter -- nothing bad happens if you accidentally come back with non-toxic mushrooms.
Saying cyanide turns hydroxocobalamin into vitamin B12 might be a confusing statement. Since hydroxocobalamin is already vitamin B12, and a naturally occuring form with higher transport molecule affinity than cyanocobalamin. Cyanocobalamin is a manufactured form of B12 used in supplementation because it is more stable, but not an active form of B12 and has to be converted in the body first back to hydroxocobalamin and then to adenosyl- and methylcobalamin.
Does the conversion from Cyanocobalamin to Hydroxocobalamin release cyanide or is it done through another mechanism? I'm sure in the case of its use as an antidote the amounts present are high enough for your body to release them in the urine instead of converting them, but that isn't always how the liver works (I mean, it mostly just tries converting the compound to be better excreted). It's an interesting thought (clearly the antidote works though so it must either be peed out unconverted or converted without releasing cyanide.)
@@unoriginal1086 As far as I'm aware cyanocobalamin is either excreted or converter to other forms of cobalamin, releasing the cyano group into the blood stream, this is then converted into thiocyanate and excreted. I imagine this isn't bad because this conversion happens slowly and gradually. And since you take a very large dose of hydroxocobalamin, cobalamin levels in the blood will be very high, and since hydroxocobalamin has higher affinity for transport molecules a lot of cyanocobalamin will be excreted.
10:00 "It would cost thousand possibly tens of thousands for a single experiment" NileRed could do it; he spent about $5,000 in reagents to make the worlds purest cookie. A... singular, one cookie five grand. Or when he made a "grill" out of four bars of pure gold. Just get more subscribers and a patrion and you can do thousand dollar experiments!
mycology interested biology student here who has read the study before. thanks. this was wonderfully made. instant subscribe.
Where can I get indocyanine green so I can safely taste my death caps?
In poland this family of mushrooms is called muchomory, it literally means fly-death. Cause of this smell it was used back in a day to kill flies - it was sprinkled with sugar, flies would lick sugar and die :D
Ahoj! It's muchomůrky in Czech. I've also heard about putting sliced Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) in milk to poison flies.
I remember being a child, being shown this mushroom by by uncle scared the shit out of me, like it could hop into my mouth by itself to kill me. These days it seems rarer in the woods around where i live, dunno why
There is no shortage of Amanita species mushrooms in Southern New England, both the destroying angel and the brightly colored red or yellow amanita muacaria which isn't necessarily deadly poisonous but can make you quite sick and can cause some extremely unpleasant hallucinations so it's classified as a deliriant and not as a hallucinogenic. They are quite beautiful to photograph and are best appreciated that way!
@@goodun2974 thats the muscaria tho, which i think needs to be prepared before being eaten
@@losfogo7149 , People have reported extremely variable effects from Muscaria; some people say it can be pleasant if prepared and processed properly beforehand, while others say it's more like a feverish nightmare dream. The mushrooms themselves may vary widely in chemical makeup, and so I think I'll pass! One guy I spoke to said that a friend of his had tried Big Laughing Gym, which purportedly contains ibotene and muscarine, and the only effect he had was several hours of leg paralysis.
@@losfogo7149 Do not eat Amanita muscaria with any amount of praparation. It'll just make you sick and hallucinate. There is an edible amanita called the Blusher, which is said to be harmless and tasty when cooked, but it looks quite similar to the really toxic Amanita pantherina, so I am not risking it.
Love the mix of chem, biology and field research. I gotta add more research to my vids too.
This is the first video from this channel I've seen and it's very good. I think I just found another top notch science communication channel.
It is normally 1/2 a cap would kill u. The issue is this new chemical has a short half life. It may be an antidote. But high dosages would be needed.
This turned into a harm reduction lecture real fast halfway through. I love it
such a great presentation. Keep up the good work!
Overall, very nice video with good contemporary science.
As someone who spent a number of years working on amatoxins and other cyclic peptide mushroom toxins, just wanted to point out a small error. Amatoxins do not impact protein synthesis directly but rather inhibit RNA polymerase II, which causes the cessation of transcription of protein coding genes.
Thanks for the news, but I do want to say one thing. There have been a few rare cases where a pre-approved drug with wide usage had been unapproved for a specific use. I doubt that will be the case here, namely because poison research is often too complicated for such bureaucracy.
I love this stuff! Aren’t there’s other medical dyes that are also antidotes? Prussian Blue? I think I remember that being an antidote for something. 🤔
it's used to treat in poisonings with certain heavy metals and radioactive elements.
According to Wikipedia, Prussian Blue can be used in Thallium poisoning, radioactive cesium and to indicate a disease I know nothing about, G6PD deficiency. Another dye, methylene blue can cause hemolytic anemia in people with G6PD deficiency. But methylene blue has been used to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, cyanide poisoning, and malaria.Its main use as a medicine today is treatment of Methemoglobinemia which can give the skin a blue color and make the blood chocolatey brown. Medication reactions seem to be the most common cause, but there is a recessive gene possessed by the Fugate family who often had two copies of the gene due to inbreeding. Kind of neat that a blue dye turned smurfy blue people pinkish. If I remember correctly, too much of the dye can actually cause Methemoglobinemia. I became interested in the dye years ago looking for a cheap monoamine oxidase inhibitor to use instead of the obscenely expensive one I take for depression. Fortunately my medicine's price is merely R-rated now because the dye doesn't appear to be a good substitute. I think there may be a smattering of research suggesting it might extend lifespan. A shame because I had thought peeing blue would make a neat party trick.
Was it Methylene Blue?
@@Eyes0penNoFearyes
Against cynaide poisoning
Fantastic video thank you so much. Subscribed for sure
Great content and equally great delivery!
These videos are so good
Rational Thought: "Sometime soon we hope" - That was raw Reactions... real raw lmaoooo
Studied microbiology at University. Our 2nd year involved an Autumn fungal foray, rummaging around the forest in Surrey and collecting macro-fungi. We brought them back to the lab for identification. Really great day!
That's pretty interesting, specially considering the majority of death by mushrooms are from the amanita family. One question tho, could they find one better chemical that has a better survival rate, for exemple, and what would it take to get it approved?
Well it's super awesome that there's progress in a treatment for those who have been exposed to these mushrooms, but what about the fact that most people don't realize that the mushroom is killing them until they are almost dead several weeks later? I think the bigger breakthrough here is just proving out this piece of technology for creating antidotes rather than this specific antidote. I liked your show please keep doing it.
The little bit of humor infused in this video got me rolling. Although I do believe will be missed by many not paying enough attention. Great video informative and funny.
Each year whole families die from eating poison mushrooms, I never ever eat food with mushroom in it unless I for a fact know it was mushroom bought from a store. Not market, not anything like that, from a store. And I bought them myself and made the food or oversaw the making of the food.
Video subject quality/presentation/delivery 10/10 audio quality is a little rough in spots. A lav mic would do wonders!
The problem with X-ray crystallography is that many proteins cannot be crystallized, aswell as the crystal structure not matching protein conformation under physiological conditions. Cryoelectronmicroscopy is a better fit most of the time nowadays.
Another poignant reason why I have never liked or eaten mushrooms. Thanks for the very entertaining lesson. You really put some work into this and it shows!
In reference to molecular research. AI can use these models and insert the ones that Mathematically FIT INTO THE PROTIEN.
lovely video! well done, solid effort must have gone into the script!
Welp....Just found my New favorite channel.. subbed!
As someone who loves to pick mushrooms and lives in a place that mostly only has death caps and russula aeruginea (very similar mushrooms at first glance), I think this is amazing news.
Russula and amanita are really hard to confuse - the large group of gilled mushrooms separates into two major orders - and russula belongs to one, amanita to the other large order.
They are easily to distinguish if you want to learn.
It's like distinguishing conifers from sea weeds.
If you want to collect mushrooms yourself for eating, you should really learn to distinguish those two orders first.
@@w1darr I've been picking these mushrooms for decades, of course you can see which one is which if you have the experience. The problem is that not everyone does and they have many similarities: shape, color, size...
I have to pay so much attention when I'm with someone else, or I just ban them from picking them up entirely, which is a shame, because they're extremely delicious.
top notch descriptions and explanations. fun video :D
That timeline at 5:41 is truly priceless!
Sodium Nitrite solution and Sodium Thiosulfate Solution are main components of Cyanide poisoning Antidote kits
i'm not even that much into biochemistry and i really enjoyed this video. really interesting! pretty funny too
It's so fascinating that I've only been recommended this channel recently evert though I watch a lot of chemistry and science explained videos. Maybe the algorithm is trying out new ideas!
The TH-cam algorithms frequently recommend videos to me that I have no interest in whatsoever, or sometimes actively dislike, and they continually hit me with ads that are obnoxious and offensive and not for products that I have any interest in. In short the TH-cam and Google algorithms suck, truly and completely.
Very nice content!! Keep it up!
Nice video - just found out about this channel , and you earned my subscription especially because of the reference list attached as a google doc.
I'm an ex-scientist that worked on x-ray crystallography (does that really exists: ex-scientist ? ) - I just moved to another field and now dealing with software based financial crime detection.
I did try a small piece once.Tasted mild at first but deleoped a burning sensation after a while. Smell of fresh ones are normally mild.
Dew isn’t deadly??? Have you never heard of Mountain Dew and it’s family of dews?
Diabetes has entered the comments.
@@TheTubejunky 😂😅 Exactly!
My grandmother’s name was Juanita and she had a million nieces and nephews ( slight exaggeration) so it was aunt Juanita. Said in a southern accent it came out as An-Juanita . A neighbor thought her name was Amanita and I’d giggle every time she said that and tease my gram about being toxic (she wasn’t )
Remember, kids! The mushrooms are just fruiting bodies. The fungus itself is a brain-like mat of mycelium that can spread over miles. This is their planet, not ours!
Great video but some of the cuts away from graphs/pictures is too quick for most people to make them out.
It is very interesting that Amanitins also contain in their structure a fragment of the amino acids tryptophan, containing an indole cycle like this dye. In any case, this substance can be the starting point for creating more effective antidotes to combat mushroom poisoning. It would be even more interesting to create a vaccine, for example, by connecting amanitin with a fairly large protein or glycoprotein, capable of causing immune response. How hard it is in relation to such short cyclic peptides a big question, but in the case of poisoning with such substances, symptoms may not appear immediately and therefore the use of antidotes can be ineffective.
Great video, thanks
Please don't flash text on the screen so fast I can't even pause on it.... Instant hate
M. Sc. of chemistry here... I performed lots of X-ray crystallography (better: powder diffractometry). You cannot imagine the work! And solving the structures of my substances had been hard as well because I had a microcrystalline powder and no single crystals!😂
Agent 49: How about some mushroom soup 💀
What about Milk Thistle??
I can't imagine eating a dubious mushroom in a survival situation, but saving one so that I could then just walking out of the woods and into a hospital to identify the mushroom for them and get the antidote.
I also find it hilarious that AMA also stands for "against medical advice"
Trust me, if it smelled like a dead body, you would NOT have gone for a second sniff.
And this may be what Dr Bastien in France may have fortuitously discovered in 1957.
This was a combination of IV Vitamin C, and per os nifuroxazide and dihydrostreptomycin at usual posology.
I have my doubts about that "trained mushroom hunter" of yours if he recommend you to smell those mushrooms. Even their spores contain the poison, you really don't want to inhale them. And even if you did not actually smell them, what you did was not really setting up safe example.
Also a note on your conclusion: when you start feeling bad after eating Amanita mushrooms, it's usually already too late. It takes longer than four hours for that to happen with these mushrooms.
Humans inhale fungal spores almost 24/7, unlike molds sniffing mushrooms is not a threat unless you are immunocompromised
Well buddy... Alan Rockefeller a well respected mushroom king regularly tells people that all mushrooms are safe to taste... keyword taste not eat. Dose makes the poison
The hydroxYcobalamin (not hydroxo) is also a form of a Vitamin B12.
Great content
5:41 Haha, took me a second to catch that. 🤣
Read of a woman who survived. Someone thought to ask her "How did it taste?"
"Really nice."
My friend and I once licked a Death Cap for ....shamanic reasons lol
I once cooked ate some green potatoes accidentally, (it was dark), felt really bad afterwards, once i realise d why I rang the NHS for advice.
This was a Saturday, she took my number said she'd speak to the toxicology people.
Rang me back later and said the toxicology dept was closed for the weekend and as it was a Bank holiday, could they call me back on Tuesday.
anyway, I though Milk thistle (Silymarin ) or maybe NAC was pretty good against amanita.
I thought NAC can help if given early enough
according to my police friend, a dead body smells like rotting chicken meat, so he almost pukes every time he smells bad chicken :S
Wow dude
Nice channel you have here 🎉🎉🎉
You bang out those $100 chemical names like a scientific Jedi. Namaste!
In denmark those mushrooms are called white fly-shroom
Put a.i to use, make it detect amanita mushroom..
The Deathcap is more deadly than the Destroying Angel.
Excellent!!😊
Fascinating storytelling. Quite an anti-climax in the end. Reduced mortality by 50% (only) if taken at least 4 hours before the poisoning.
Next steps need to enter the story. Now scientists are trying to modify this molecule to improve its binding affinity and overall efficacy. It will take them at least 2 years (or rather forever) to propose better candidates and move to trials in primates.
Computing power is going up at a fast rate. AMD just announced a 96 core 192 tread desktop CPU that runs at around 5 Ghz. combining that with an evolution algorithm could narrow down the options much faster. If they got a rack full of these maybe with a bunch of GPUs as well you might see results sooner. But yes testing this will be not be fast.
Yeah, but this is with a drug that already exists. Modifying it to be more effective could lead to significantly higher efficacy, and also mouse metabolism is faster than human due to their smaller size so that four hour window could be a lot longer in humans (plus it could be longer with a modified, more effective chemical). The idea of using pre-approved drugs for antidote research is interesting but I honestly doubt a miracle antidote like narcan would be discovered being used for something else because of how specific the usage is. Hopefully by using related compounds and in humans not mice, the mortality rate will be much lower and the time window will be extended.
3:37 Notice the 0 and the O for oxygen ;)
I noticed this also haha
I find those "grüner Knollenblätterpilz" a lot here in germany
Very enjoyable - thanks! I have eaten amanitas, but A. caesarea rather than phalloides. They were OK, but nothing to write home about - I think most of their cachet comes from the name.
This entire video is a alibi for his sourcing and production of a poison to kill his long time sworn enemy. That was not, in fact, baking soda.
Great video. But when you handle toxic plants, please wear gloves. Exbiochemist here.
Its not a plant 😅 mushrooms have no toxic affects unless ingested unlike plants whose chemicals can absorb through your skin
sometime soon, we hope
Also called death angel.
apa mungkin semua hal beracundan atau berbisa memiliki antidot didalamnya?
So I just need to cook my death caps in indocyanine green?
just another reminder to me to never eat wild mushrooms
Just when you thought, that there can't be a superlative of deadly...
@@Scottrichy As??
Can people make the mushroom poison free by injecting with the antodote?
no because the antidote doesn't actually disable the poison, it just blocks the receptors in your body that the poison normally will effect. Basically it makes it so the poison can't hurt you long enough for your body to get rid of it. In this case, it isn't super effective because it only blocks the poison from entering the cells where they do more damage and it relies on your body to get rid of it, so it will still cause significant harm and can only work in a short window of time. But still, everything helps and if it can save even one life it's of course worth it!
I think mew is spelled mu
So what your saying is they will soon be edible
Did you just inhale deadly spores
What does it symbolize?