{"id":12032,"date":"2025-04-01T18:59:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2025\/04\/01\/discovering-a-magic-mushroom-was-no-trick\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:18:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T13:18:45","slug":"discovering-a-magic-mushroom-was-no-trick","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2025\/04\/01\/discovering-a-magic-mushroom-was-no-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering a \u2018magic\u2019 mushroom was no trick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p class=\"intro news-subhead\">Researcher Alexander Bradshaw and team uncover a new fungi species<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n<p>A new species of psychoactive fungi has been described from Africa by a team that includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/faculty\/profiles\/alexander-bradshaw\/\">Alexander Bradshaw<\/a>, a post-doctoral researcher in Clark\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/departments\/biology\/\">Biology<\/a> Department, working in the lab with professors <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/faculty\/profiles\/david-hibbett\/\">David Hibbett<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/faculty\/profiles\/javier-tabima-restrepo\/\">Javier Tabima Restrepo<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The species, which has been named <em>Psilocybe ochraceocentrata<\/em>, is a close relative to <em>Psilocybe cubensis<\/em>, the most well-known species of psychoactive fungi. The finding is detailed in a paper published by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2024.12.03.626483v1\">bioRxiv<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"927\" height=\"609\" src=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/P_ochra.png\" alt=\"mushrooms sprouting from ground\" class=\"wp-image-20733\" style=\"width:419px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/P_ochra.png 927w, https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/P_ochra-300x197.png 300w, https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/P_ochra-768x505.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 927px) 100vw, 927px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Holotype of Psilocybe ochraceocentrata (CS-3006). Photo by Cathy Sharp.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Bradshaw\u2019s research focuses on the psychoactive mushroom genus <em>Psilocybe<\/em>, commonly known as magic mushrooms, and this discovery is part of an ongoing project to study <em>Psilocybe<\/em> diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Magic mushrooms exploded in popularity as part of the hippie counterculture in the 1960s and 70s, though magic mushrooms, and the psychoactive compound they produce, psilocybin, have a long history, dating thousands of years to Mesoamerica, where it was used for religious purposes. However, after the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, many scientists halted their research of psilocybin, so little is known about magic mushrooms in comparison to other fungi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bradshaw, who has done fieldwork in Central America, South America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and New Zealand, collaborates with museums across the globe to examine rare fungal specimens from their collections. Museums send Bradshaw samples, and he takes them into the lab for genetic and genomic sequencing to learn more about their biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen you start collecting specimens and people hear about it, you get a reputation, and people start contacting you,\u201d he says. This led to a partnership with Cathy Sharp of the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, who sent Bradshaw two specimens, collected in 2011 in South Africa and in 1995 in Zimbabwe. He ran genomic sequencing on them and noticed that the specimen was similar to <em>Psilocybe cubensis<\/em> \u2014 but not the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of the roughly 160 identified species of magic mushrooms globally, only seven had been found in Africa, says Bradshaw. There are likely more species across the continent, but limited research means they are currently undescribed. Bradshaw needed to make sure the sample sent by Sharp wasn\u2019t one of the previously identified seven species from Africa. It\u2019s common for these fungi to look different but be among the same species, a phenomenon known as morphological plasticity, Bradshaw explains. To determine if <em>Psilocybe ochraceocentrata<\/em> was novel, Bradshaw examined the genomic and genetic variation in comparison to <em>Psilocybe cubensis<\/em> and closely related species from Africa and Asia. In every test, it was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The finding helps support the idea Africa has a rich fungal community, whose diversity is not well understood, Bradshaw says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t have a good understanding of the global diversity of fungi. If you were to make a map of known species and where they are from, the vast majority are from Europe and the coasts of the United States.\u201d Some parts of Mexico and Australia have been heavily studied, and findings are ongoing in New Zealand and Southeast Asia. But Africa remains understudied, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because Sharp collected the specimen, she had the right to name the new species. She chose a classical naming scheme \u2014 picking a defining characteristic of the organism \u2014 so \u201c<em>Psilocybe ochraceocentrata<\/em>\u201d refers to the ochre center on the mushroom\u2019s cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEven though we \u2018discovered\u2019 it, people have been collecting it for a while,\u201d says Bradshaw. \u201cI think that these are very common, but because they look very similar to <em>Psilocybe cubensis<\/em>, people probably wrote them off as <em>Psilocybe cubensis<\/em>, which makes perfect sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bradshaw was originally a microbiologist working on bacterial genetics when he felt a desire to learn more about genomics. He fell in love with mushrooms and other fungi in graduate school and began researching in Bryn Dentinger\u2019s newly established mycology lab at the Natural History Museum of Utah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s so much going on with fungal research regardless of where you look,\u201d he says, noting that they have an air of mystery. \u201cWhether you\u2019re looking at them from a macroscopic level or studying how chemically diverse they are, we know very little about them compared to a lot of other organisms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Historic_Mushrooms_2025-030-1024x674-2.jpg\" alt=\"historic mushroom\" class=\"wp-image-74864\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Historic Type specimen of the mushroom <em>Lentinus squamulosum<\/em>, part of a new project being undertaken by the Hibbett and Tabima Lab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Historic_Mushrooms_2025-005-1024x955-2.jpg\" alt=\"handwritten paper about historic mushrooms\" class=\"wp-image-74863\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Notes about <em>Lentinus squamulosum<\/em>, part of a new project being undertaken by the Hibbett and Tabima Lab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researcher Alexander Bradshaw and team uncover a new fungi species<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12033,"template":"","meta":{"story_color":"#525250","story_headerImg":12033,"section_label":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[227],"displayed_author":[237],"featured":[494],"topic":[328,244,300,162],"class_list":["post-12032","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology","displayed_author-melissa-hanson","featured-secondary","topic-africa","topic-biology","topic-major-in-biology","topic-research"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Discovering a \u2018magic\u2019 mushroom was no trick | ClarkU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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