spore

There are trillions of ways to die in “The Last of Us,” one for each Cordyceps spore that turned most of humankind into raging, mindless cannibals.

His journey with the spore started in 2022, when he and colleague Andrew Luzmore began collaborating with Hill-Maini, identifying various kitchen waste streams that might be good candidates for fermentation.

A study of pollen and spore abundances revealed a profusion of fern spores showing a range of malformations, from abnormalities in wall structure to evidence for botched meiotic divisions, leading to unseparated, dwarfed, and fused fern spores.

The four additional episodes of high Hg concentrations and high fern spore malformations were unlikely connected to later phases of Central Atlantic Magmatic Province volcanism.

Their framework reveals diverse functions -- such as excretion, venom spraying, prey hunting, spore dispersal, and plant guttation -- highlighting potential applications in soft robotics, additive manufacturing, and drug delivery.