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posted by janrinok on Friday February 21 2020, @07:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the some-toxic-mushrooms... dept.

New Atlas:

Though many people simply grab a bag of mushrooms from their local store, others prefer to forage. But incorrectly identifying wild mushrooms can lead to more than an upset stomach, it could prove fatal. Researchers from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service have developed a portable test to help.
...
The researchers point out that there are only a few laboratories capable of testing biological specimens for amatoxins, and even then the results may take a while to appear, perhaps not soon enough to help a patient. The new test can identify the presence of amanitins in minutes.
...
The lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) test relies on a specific reactive monoclonal antibody and is sensitive to 10 parts per billion, and comprises a sample pad, a conjugate pad, nitrocellulose membrane, and a wicking pad. The team says that a mushroom sample the size of a grain of rice can be used, but the test can also identify toxins in the urine of those who have already consumed suspect fungi.

It's good news for budding mushroom hunters, but the test kit is not yet available for purchase and the test can only detect toxins from the genus Amanita, which includes fatal species like Destroying Angel ("from Wikipedia:Amanita bisporigera and A. ocreata in eastern and western North America, and A. virosa in Europe.[1] Another very similar species, A. verna or fool's mushroom, was first described in France.").

See also:

New Test Identifies Poisonous Mushrooms

https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins12020123 (registering DOI)


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @09:06PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @09:06PM (#960840)

    Don't eat mushrooms you can't identify.

    Shhhh, there's a craze here in the UK for foraging [telegraph.co.uk], as the middle class bastards who engage in this *are* damaging the local environment (one cunt is doing it to supply stuff to the sort of high end restaurants where the idiots judge the quality of their food by the price and the 'celebrity' status of the head chef. One of their foraging areas has quite a healthy colony of Amanita virosa [wikipedia.org], I live in hope that they 'forage' them and take out themselves and some of these other fuckers, though, how one could mistake any of the Amanita family for edible fungi in the first place..(yes, yes, there *are* edible members of the Amanita family...and ones where the primary toxins are destroyed by cooking thereby rendering them boringly edible rather than interestingly hallucinogenic...)

    I get around this issue by not eating any mushrooms. They taste like dirt anyway.

    Hopefully not based solely on exposure to our old friend Agaricus bisporus?, dirt?, seriously, they have such a wide range of tastes and textures depending on species I don't know where to start..though, I should add that according to the books, one of the better tasting ones is the Amanita phalloides [wikipedia.org], there are a number of stories of people telling doctors that it was the best tasting mushrooms they'd ever had, as they lay dieing in hospital..Ol' Mother Nature eh?, bit of a nasty bitch with a warped sense of humour...
     

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday February 21 2020, @09:58PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday February 21 2020, @09:58PM (#960849) Journal

    there are a number of stories of people telling doctors that it was the best tasting mushrooms they'd ever had, as they lay dieing in hospital

    So you say, it's a taste to die for?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by darkfeline on Saturday February 22 2020, @03:25AM (1 child)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday February 22 2020, @03:25AM (#960922) Homepage

    Thanks, now I know what to request for my final meal. It'll save the state the cost of the lethal injection, so win win.

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    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday February 22 2020, @08:55AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 22 2020, @08:55AM (#960975) Journal

      Bonus? Won't be you final meal, as it takes about a week to kill your liver.

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