Genetic Technology Reveals How Poisonous Mushrooms Cook up Toxins: Possible New Drug, Michigan State University Study

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Heather Hallen spent eight years looking for poison in all the wrong places.Alpha-amanitin is the poison of the death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. The Michigan State University plant biology research associate was looking for a big gene that makes a big enzyme that produces alpha-amanitin, since that’s how other fungi produce similar compounds. But after years of defeat, she and her team called in the big guns – new technology that sequences DNA about as fast as a death cap mushroom can kill.

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