Lily Peck entered the cryogenic freezer, clad in a face shield and thick gloves for protection against the dry ice, while a colleague watched the door to ensure it didn’t lock. The carbon dioxide and water vapor rose in clouds around her, she recalls in an interview with The Scientist, as she reached for the rack with the preserved fungal strains, careful not to burn her skin on the icy trays. Stored in glass vials, these sinister strains once presented a deadly threat to coffee and other important crop plants, but had been dormant in this freezer for as long as 50 years. Peck, a grad student at Imperial College London, was here to awaken them.
The Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), where the cryogenic freezer is located, has what Peck describes as a “fungal museum.” This collection of around 30,000 strains of living microorganisms, spread out through ...