*grainular

Because GenAI adoption is recent, effects may be nascent and evolving. The paper covers up to 2025 but many changes may play out over longer horizons. It will be interesting to see the continued trend to see if it's a reactive fluke or the paradigm shift.

#cortex — one of the distinct layers in a #stratified lichen thallus, covering the top surface
#reproducibility — the ability for an experiment to be readily repeated independently and yield the same results.

Please, let me know if I missed any!

#microbiota - the community of microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts, etc.) associated with a host—in this case, living naturally an invariably (and there is a very cool study on this!) within lichens

#Matrix and #Contact stages — early developmental phases in the lichenization process. Figure 2 of the original article illustrates these and later stages in more detail as the text elaborates on what is happening there

#stratified — consisting of distinct layers
#spore_discharge — many lichens actively eject their spores by shooting them up from their fruiting bodies
#lichenization — the process by which the symbiotic partners associate to form a lichen. We recognize stages leading to the full lichen structure

#in_vitro — In controlled laboratory conditions
#resynthesis — laboratory reconstruction of the lichen partnership from isolated symbionts
#photobiont — the photosynthetic partner (an alga or cyanobacterium) of a lichen symbiosis. Conversely, the lichen-forming fungus is called a #mycobiont

#thallus — the body of a lichen, built from distinct layers of symbionts, such as fungus or alga, that does not resemble the shape of any one partner in isolation
#axenic — a culture containing only one organism, free from others. You can think of it as "clean" or "pure"

As I’ve been kindly reminded by friends outside the field, not everyone wakes up thinking about fungi and algae. So allow me to fix the #accessibility of the communication piece by offering a few perhaps simplified but easy-to-grasp definitions:

I've been critically thinking about it, and came to a conclusion that cognitive recurrence and awareness of own thought process is *required* for critical thinking. It could, IF we allow it to access own process and recursively model its network patterns. #AISafety research told us not to do.

The full text of the review article, published in Annual Review of Microbiology @annualreviews.bsky.social, is available here: doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Much can be learned from this undoubtedly invaluable experimental #legacy. Rather than a verdict, we offer a #roadmap —verified purity, clear success benchmarks, reproducible methods, and tests of microbial partners. After 150 years, we finally have the tools to do it right. 8/8

So, have lichens been rebuilt from axenic cultures? The record offers almosts, maybes, and caveats. Some experiments came close; none so far has been reproducible. Instead of making claims, we present the story as it stands—open, unfinished, waiting for the next experiment. 7/8

With non-axenic material and terrarium lichens set aside, only a handful of studies remain claiming thalli from supposedly axenic material—yet each carries caveats: unverified soil cultures, reused photos, missing cortex, bacterial traces. The closer you read, the blurrier it gets. 6/8

Then came what we affectionately call terrarium lichens: thalli ground up, filtered, sorted into “algal” and “fungal” pieces, then coaxed back together. The Tissue Culture method yielded impressive, yet unlikely #axenic structures, as resident #microbiota were never methodologically addressed. 5/8

Among the few studies that, by modern #microbiology standards, likely achieved true #axenicity, thallus formation remained limited. These cultures advanced little beyond the Contact or Matrix #lichenization stages and were not reported to reproduce the structural complexity of lichens in nature. 4/8

Defining #axenic was equally ambiguous. For much of the 20th century, spore discharge was believed to yield #sterile cultures, even as bacterial #contamination was regularly noted. Without antibiotics or molecular checks, ‘axenic’ was mostly assumed—or confirmed visually. 3/8

It turned out that ‘resynthesis’ has meant many things over time, depending on whom you asked. For some, success was a fully stratified #thallus; for others, just a fungus enclosing a few algal cells was enough to indicate lichen formation. The field never settled where ‘success’ began—or ended. 2/8