Humans Share Mushroom DNA

It might seem strange to compare yourself to a mushroom, but for centuries, even scientists grouped fungi together with plants. Modern genetic analysis, however, has completely overturned that idea, revealing a much closer, and more surprising, relationship. Fungi and animals are actually sister kingdoms, sharing a more recent common ancestor with each other than either group does with plants. This deep evolutionary connection means our genetic blueprints have a remarkable amount of overlap.

This shared heritage places both humans and fungi into a biological supergroup known as Opisthokonta. The name refers to a key feature of our last common ancestor, a single-celled aquatic organism that propelled itself with a single, rear-facing flagellum, or tail