I actually chased the mycelium, when it stopped producing spores.

And so we see a mushroom here sporulating.

At the end of 1987, the scope of the biological weapons work was further expanded and research into additional bacterial agents, such as Clostridium perfringens and fungal toxins, such as trichothecene mycotoxins, was carried out.

I was able to morph the culture into a non sporulating form.

And the spores are germinating, and the mycelium forms and goes underground.

But the insects aren't stupid, and they would avoid the spores when they came close, and so I morphed the cultures into a non sporulating form.

The good news, it's not cancer, it's not tuberculosis, it's not coccidioidomycosis or some obscure fungal infection.

OK. So, the patient was treated then with a third generation cephalosporin antibiotic and doxycycline, and on day three, it didn't help she had progressed to acute failure.

An example of an organism or two that happens to be quite immortal would be plant seeds or bacterial spores.

These are spores this is in their spores.

Consider the fungi including mushrooms, rusts, molds and many disease causing organisms.

Now after sporulation, the spores repel.

The Life Box you're gonna be getting a DVD of the TED conference you add soil, you add water, you have mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi as well as spores, like of the Agarikon mushroom.

Analysis of those samples indicated that certain areas of the site did contain elevated levels of Bacillus anthracis spores.

They sporulated, the spores attract insects, the insects laid eggs, eggs became larvae.

You could fly 100 Ph.D. students under the umbrella of this concept, because my supposition is that entomopathogenic fungi, prior to sporulation, attract the very insects that are otherwise repelled by those spores.

Here you see a typical cucumber leaf that turned actually from green to black because of a black fungus, sooty mold, which is covering it.

You don't have to heat them up as hot as you would something you do pressure canning because bacterial spores can't grow in the acid.

And I got my daughter's Barbie doll dish, I put it right where a bunch of carpenter ants were making debris fields, every day, in my house, and the ants were attracted to the mycelium, because there's no spores.

Bacterial spores are thought now by scientists to exist as individual cells that are alive, but in suspended animation for as long as 250 million years.

The bacterial genes express proteins that are toxic to corn boring insects, but that are harmless to birds, fish, and mammals, including humans. As the modified corn fends off insect pests, it also reduces the levels of the mold Fusarium, thereby reducing the levels of fumonisin.

After they sporulate, they do rot.

What happens is, you pour Bacillus pasteurii onto a pile of sand, and it starts filling up the voids in between the grains.

Everything is covered in invisible ecosystems made of tiny lifeforms bacteria, viruses and fungi.

The biological weapons programme also began research on other agents, including ricin toxin and Clostridium botulinum spores.

Oh, bad luck. Oh!

The fundamental forms of ferns followed, to bear spores that foreshadowed seeds.

In addition, Iraq provided the locations where the unilateral destruction of bulk agents, including Bacillus anthracis, botulinum toxin, Clostridium perfringens and aflatoxin, had taken place. These included two dump sites at Al Hakam and destruction sites at Al Azzizziyah firing range (75 km south east of Baghdad) and Al Nibai desert (50 km north west of Baghdad).

A moldy loaf of bread lay on the table.

First, a burial suit infused with mushroom spores, the Mushroom Death Suit.

And the answer is, perhaps, that you use these guys, Bacillus pasteurii, a micro organism that is readily available in wetlands and marshes, and does precisely that.

We see the result, the traces, if you like, of the Bacillus pasteurii being harnessed to sculpt the desert into these habitable environments.

One of the interesting things about these particular guys is that they're in the actinomycete and streptomycete groups of the bacteria, which is where we get most of our antibiotics.

It's seven years of bad luck, we don't need that.

The seeds then are mothered by this mycelium.

It's covered with a crocheted netting that is embedded with mushroom spores.

This game's called Spore. I've been working on it for several years.

Oh, I mean, bad luck finding her here like that.

But they'll make a man out of you! A man like you?

She'll soon leave to have her baby.

Because farming takes place outdoors and in dirt, such contamination is a fact of life. Over the centuries, the main culprit in mass food poisoning often has been contamination of unprocessed crops by fungal toxins a risk that is exacerbated when insects attack food crops, opening wounds that allow fungi (molds) to get a foothold.

Every year, innumerable packaged food products worldwide are withheld or recalled from the market due to the presence of all natural contaminants like insect parts, toxic molds, bacteria, and viruses. Because farming takes place outdoors and in dirt, such contamination is a fact of life.

This is the Vibrio fischeri molecule.

Baccarat.

Tough!