Why do fungal freeways never jam?

Marcus Roper Professor / UCLA Mathematics and Computational Medicine /UCLA

Traffic congestion is a maddening fact of life for drivers in cities. The more cars a road carries, the slower everyone goes. Fungi too build freeways — cellular roads that can stretch for meters along forest floors, and that ceaselessly transport nutrients, water and cell stuff that the fungi and its plant partners need for their growth. Unlike humans highways, however, fungal freeways have had millions of years to perfect their transport. I’ll explain how clever engineering means that the flow of cellular traffic never jams.

Recommended grade level: 6th-8th