Mycology

If you consumed a wild mushroom and suddenly started seeing tiny people around you, you might reasonably assume it contained a familiar psychedelic.

But that does not appear to be the case with Lanmaoa asiatica, known locally as jian shou qing, a mushroom species sold in markets in Yunnan, southwestern China.

When eaten undercooked, the mushroom can produce vivid visions of miniature people – not unlike Gulliver on his travels to Lilliput.

Yunnan hospitals get dozens of these cases each year.

To try and find out the root cause, University of Utah mycologists Colin Domnauer and Bryn Dentinger sequenced the genomes of 53 mushroom samples from across the wider Lanmaoa genus.