This Dangerous Fungus Has Become Resistant to Every Major Antifungal Drug We Have... Twice - ScienceAlert

D. rex's fruiting bodies were discovered in the forests of Yunnan Province. (Song et al., Frontiers in Fungal Biology, 2026) Yunnan Province in China is famous for its mushrooms and fungi, but somehow, scientists have only just come across a new species that has rightly earned the name 'king'. Named Dianjunus rex (or D. rex for short), its gigantic, club-like fruiting bodies can grow up to 50 centimeters tall, which is about one and a half feet, or the height of a traffic cone. A researcher holds up two D. rex fruiting bodies to show off their impressive size. (Provided by Indunil Senanayake) But its impressive size is not the only exciting thing about this fungus. Its genes also contain clues about a major moment in the history of life on Earth. Mycologist Indunil Senanayake of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues describe the new species in a paper published in Frontiers in Fungal Biology. D. rex is the only known member of its family, Dianjunaceae. "This remarkable species… provides a rare window into the evolution of extreme fungal body forms," says Senanayake.

A newly described fungus from Yunnan produces upright structures measuring up to 50 centimeters in total height. DNA and microscopic evidence support a new species, genus and family within the fungal order Xylariales. Its estimated lineage age overlaps the dinosaur extinction, but a connection between that event and its evolution remains hypothetical. Pale, fingerlike structures rising from tree roots in southwestern China have revealed an unexpected giant among fungi. Named Dianjunus rex, the newly described species produces fleshy reproductive structures reaching 50 centimeters in total height. The largest reported specimen weighed 2.2 kilograms, roughly 4.9 pounds. Its size was only the beginning of the surprise. Genetic comparisons and microscopic examinations placed the fungus on a distinct evolutionary branch, supporting a new genus and family. The findings appeared in Frontiers in Fungal Biology. The team included scientists from the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and collaborating institutions. Corresponding author Indunil C. Senanayake works at the institute’s Germplasm Bank of Wild Species.

Image: Song et. al ‘Frontiers in Fungal Biology,’ 2026 It’s a fungi-filled world and we are just living in it. There are roughly 150,000 to 157,000 known species of fungi, and now there is a new giant species to add to that tally.

When cancer cells learn to survive a drug designed to stop them, where do you turn next? A new study points to an unexpected possibility: a medicine used to treat parasitic worms. Researchers combined the deworming medicine with a targeted lung cancer drug. In laboratory experiments, the pairing reduced resistant cancer-cell viability. In mice, tumors took longer to double in size with the combination than with either drug alone. The idea was to find a weakness in cells that had learned to withstand treatment, then put that weakness under pressure. "The exciting message is that drug resistance may not make cancer cells invulnerable; it may leave them with weaknesses that we can target," pharmacology researcher Shakta Mani Satyam of RAK Medical and Health Sciences University in the United Arab Emirates told ScienceAlert. The study, published in PLOS ONE, paired gefitinib, a targeted cancer treatment, with mebendazole, a medicine used against parasitic worm infections. It focused on one model of EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer that had become resistant to gefitinib.(Matthias Tunger/DigitalVision/Getty Images)EGFR is a protein that helps relay signals telling cells to grow.

A gut pathogen that causes diarrhea and vomiting is morphing into a dangerous and difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infection (STI). In the United States, roughly 450,000 people acquire shigellosis each year, which can lead to dysentery. Historically, this highly contagious bug has mostly been spread through contaminated food or water during travel, and among young children in day care. But since the turn of the century or so, Shigella bacteria have emerged as a sexually transmitted infection as well. Shigella infections can make anyone sick, but they are now considered 'endemic' in some communities of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Several of the strains transmitted in these communities have grown resistant to multiple antibiotics. Some are now superbugs, on the brink of becoming untreatable. A recent analysis from the US CDC found that among nearly 17,000 Shigella isolates, versions that were extensively drug-resistant (XDR) rose from 2011 to 2023. In 2011, isolates that were resistant to five commonly used antibiotics made up 0 percent of the samples. By 2023, they made up 8.5 percent.