This is corn smut, a culinary valuable type of fungus. It starts life like a yeast sporidia by budding daughter cells until it finds a genetically suitable mating partner. Once it becomes dikaryotic it starts to form the fungal hypha and infects a single kernel forming what you see as a gall.

While deletirious, and often considered a blight by farmers, the immature galls can be sold for many times more than the corn if it had not been infected. They are called huitlacoche when being used as culinary, and are described as tasting sweet and savory with earthy tones.

When infecting the kernel, the corn tries to protect itself using a reactive oxygen species, that in turn is countered by the fungus’s YAP1 gene that protects it from oxidative stress. Genetic research into M. Maydis has actually worked tangible results in our ongoing fight against breast cancer!

M. Maydis is a basidiomycota or “club type” fungus, which is to say it belongs to the same order as the classic mushrooms you’re used to seeing such as fly aminita/agaric which is the inspiration for the Super Mario power up mushroom.

This fungus is also considered a model species as in it’s sporidia phase is capable of accepting gene modification.

M. Maydis is also capable of synthesizing the essential amino acid lysine, which we need but cannot produce ourselves.

So, you see, not all corn infecting funguses are bad. Some are actually really cool, and have funny names like “smut”.

  • Wren@lemmy.todayEnglish
    44·
    6 days ago

    I thought we were gonna talk about PornHub’s greatest day. Instead I got science’d all over my face.

    NSFW

    • The_v@lemmy.world
      7·
      5 days ago

      Since corn is a critical crop in many regions its one of the most studied species on the planet. Even a post about shitty corn is interesting.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
    18·
    6 days ago

    I’ve wanted to try this for so long but I don’t live in corn country 😔

    Fun fact though, Huitlacoche is a semi-indigenous American (this form of the word developed after colonization and it technically spanish) word originating from the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

    Here's the full etymology

    In Mexico, corn smut is known as huitlacoche, sometimes spelled cuitlacoche. This word entered Spanish in Mexico from Classical Nahuatl, though the Nahuatl words from which huitlacoche is derived are debated. In modern Nahuatl, the word for huitlacoche is cuitlacochin, and some sources deem cuitlacochi to be the classical form.

    Some sources wrongly give the etymology as coming from the Nahuatl words cuitlatl (“excrement” or “rear-end”, actually meaning “excrescence”) and cochtli (“sleeping”, from cochi “to sleep”), thus giving a combined mis-meaning of “sleeping/hibernating excrement”, but actually meaning “sleeping excrescence”, referring to the fact that the fungus grows between the kernels of corn and impedes them from developing, thus they remain “sleeping”.

    A second group of sources deem the word to mean “raven’s excrement.” These sources appear to be combining the word cuitlacoche for “thrasher” with cuitla, meaning “excrement,” actually meaning “excrescence”. However, the avian meaning of cuitlacoche derives from the Nahuatl word “song” cuīcatl, from the verb “to sing” cuīca. This root then clashes with this reconstruction’s second claim that the segment cuitla- comes from cuitla (“excrement”).

    One source derives the meaning as “corn excrescence,” using cuītla again and “corn” tlaōlli. This requires the linguistically unlikely evolution of tlaōlli “corn” into tlacoche.

    In Peru, it is known as chumo or pacho.

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      Neither do I but a bodega down the street actually had the canned cuitlahoche. You’re not missing much honestly. I would love to try it fresh at some point though.

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        I’m honestly just weird about fungus and have an immense desire to try as many edible (and sometimes not so edible lol) fungi as I can. This one specifically pains me because I deeply love the history of indigenous American cultures.

        • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
          5·
          6 days ago

          An ex got me a pink oyster log for Valentine’s last year, it started pinning a few weeks ago and I’ve been on a pink oyster binge ever since. Too bad this species isn’t a woody guy, so you could transport it easily.

          • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
            10·
            6 days ago

            My parents had this maple tree between our and our neighbors houses since before I was born but at some point during my teenage years it started to rot. I don’t know when it began or what caused it but I watched the maple tree I used to climb and who’s leaves I used to play in every fall develop a crevasse in its truck that got larger every year. Eventually it began to lean and discussion regarding its removal began. It was around that time though that my affinity for fungus began to develop (started growing them in my closet lol) and I noticed pearl oysters fruiting from that crevasse. Anyway I convinced them to keep a portion of its trunk and every time it fruits is a feast! The tree lives on in my stomach as well as my heart. There’s a hole in the ground where it used to be that also grows reishi which is pretty cool

      • tamal3@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 days ago

        One of the best foods I’ve ever had, and definitely the one I’ve thought of most since eating it, was a fresh corn tamal(e) with huitlacoche. It was the most delicately flavored and delicately textured food I’ve ever had, with small pieces of fresh corn kernel and even corn silk still in the masa. This description really does not do justice…

        Edit: spelling. Sorry Yiddish, that was just my mistake.

      • hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        5 days ago

        So my SO really wanted to try this. We were vacationing in Mexico and bought it at Walmart of all places.

        We were at an Airbnb and were gonna make it, but we chickened out. Afraid of doing it wrong and getting sick.

        It’s like, with chicken, I’ve prepared it enough times that when I crack open the package, I can tell pretty easily if it’s gone bad. Or when I cook it, I know to cook it long enough so it’s not pink.

        But that stuff? There’s so much we didn’t know, and were too afraid to try. A missed opportunity for sure.

        As I understand it, it’s not legal to sell in the US.

        • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          That makes my interaction early today make so much more sense!

          I have a bodega within walking distance and asked about getting some fresh or dried, and the clerk legit laughed. Then he told me in Spanglish pretty much “good luck” he got some fresh one time but was very expensive.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
    10·
    5 days ago

    El cuitlaccoche! Just this past summer I had blue corn tortillas wrapped around cheese and cuitlacoche, with a subtle tomato-based sauce on top, and let me tell ya, this was an umami paradise, like Mexico’s answer to the French savory crepe, but they are not fighting for supremacy, they inhabit neighboring culinary kingdoms and share similarities, but they unmistakably inhabit different lands.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    14·
    6 days ago

    Huitlacoche is delicious. A nice “tostada de hongos y huitlacoche” (mushrooms and huitlacoche) is so good.

  • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.orgEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    I love fungi and I’m usually an adventurous eater but something about this image really rubs me the wrong way. Cool facts though. I’m glad it exists, just not sure I’d try it.

    • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      6 days ago

      I think there’s something about the parasitic nature of it, taking over an otherwise healthy ear of corn. We tend to think of our edible fungi as growing out of the dirt like a plant, or a fallen tree, or at worst sort of calmy sitting on top of whatever it is using for its own food. THe fact that this has invaded kernels makes them very bad corn kernels and triggers something instinctive. Corn smut is one of those “the first person to try this was in a bad spot” kind of foods.

      • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.orgEnglish
        6·
        5 days ago

        Yes that’s exactly it. At the end of the day it’s pathologically deformed corn. It feels a little like the thought of eating cancerous tissue even though it’s not quite the same. I do enjoy similarly treated food items like blue cheese though so it’s probably just a matter of getting used to it.