Why are we more closely related to fungi than plants?
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Chances are pretty good that you're hearing my voice right now in the car. Well, you're not alone. It turns out that the car is an ideal place for learning, and that is science fact. Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, we teamed up with the Science Museum of Minnesota to study how parents and kids interact as they listen in the car.

And we're going to do a live webinar on Thursday, May 8th, to talk about what we learned from the study. We'll give you tips on sparking more curiosity, developing scientific inquiry skills, and more. All while driving to school or soccer. So join us live on YouTube on Thursday, May 8th at 3 p.m. Eastern. You can find all the info at brainson.org or head to our YouTube channel at Brains On Show.

From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna Goldfield. I'm not what you would call the most organized person.

I just have a hard time remembering where I left things. Sometimes I forget where I put my favorite pen or my phone or the TV remote. One time I lost a peanut butter and pickle sandwich for like 45 minutes and then found it again on my bookshelf. So I'm always really impressed when people have good systems for organizing stuff. And you know what I think is the most impressive bit of organization ever? Taxonomy.

That's the naming system that scientists use to group all living things in different categories, so you can see how they're related to one another. It's like a family tree, but for all life on Earth. I love looking through my biology book at these groups. I always find surprises. Like, did you know that whales' closest living relatives are hippos? And electric eels aren't even eels. They're more closely related to catfish. Wild.

But there's one thing I don't get. According to taxonomy, we humans are more closely related to mushrooms, mold, and other fungi than we are to plants. I'm related to a mushroom? How closely? What's up with that? Eben wanted to know too. Why are we more closely related to fungi than plants? Let's ask someone who knows a lot about this. I love this question.

Hi, my name is Christine Solomon. I'm a researcher and a scientist, and I study microbiology, which is the science of tiny things. So to answer that question, we have to think about something called taxonomy, which is a whole branch of science focused on figuring out how things are related to one another. And taxonomists use all kinds of genetic and biochemical tools to measure how organisms evolve over time.

And they've developed these amazing family trees that can illustrate these relationships. So, animals and fungi group together on this tree much more closely than they do to plants.

And scientists can measure these distances by studying the DNA, or the genetic blueprint of organisms, to compare them. And they found that the DNA of animals is much more similar to fungi than it is to plants. And some of the functional ways that fungi and humans are similar are that we both need to get nutrients by eating things.

So plants don't have to do this. They use photosynthesis to capture energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide in the air into sugar. Humans and fungi also store their energy differently than plants do. The important thing about taxonomy is that you can't use a single feature, like what something looks like,

to determine how it's related to something else. And so scientists have to use a whole toolbox full of techniques that include not only the study of DNA and genetics, but also the life history and the cellular machinery of organisms to understand how they evolved or changed over time. Well, that's pretty cool.

Scientists have spent hundreds of years figuring out how different species are connected, from squirrels to salamanders. Dogs, for example, are closely related to wolves, jackals, and foxes. You can look at these animals and see how similar they are. But sometimes animals look similar even though they aren't that closely related.

like dolphins and sharks. They both live underwater and have fins, but they're in totally different animal groups. That's why scientists use other tools for figuring out how related different creatures are, like comparing their DNA, which is a set of instructions that every living thing has for making itself, which brings us back to humans and fungi. Turns out, humans and fungi aren't

closely related. Our DNA is very, very different, but we both eat food to produce energy. Plants don't do that. They make their energy from sunlight. That means they're even more different from us than fungi are. So we're a little more closely related to fungi than to plants, but not very closely related to either. I'm glad I'm not in charge of organizing all life on Earth.

I do want to keep reading about taxonomy, though. Where'd my book go? Oh, man. ♪

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If you, yes, you have a question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next time and the next day and every weekday. Until then. Ah, I found my book. It was in the fridge.

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