| At first glance, nature seems easily divisible between plants and animals. Fungi, however, are a pretty big plot twist in this otherwise simple narrative. After all, fungi appear to be mostly plantlike and were classified as such for centuries. Mushrooms grow out of the ground like plants, and even microscopic fungi such as yeast don't have any recognizable animalian qualities. But once you start analyzing fungi genetics, the story gets a lot more complicated. For one, fungi don't have chloroplasts, the part of a plant cell necessary for photosynthesis. Fungi obtain nutrients by secreting a digestive enzyme into their surroundings and then absorbing nutrients, unlike the process of photosynthesis that plants use to obtain their food. And last (but not least), evidence suggests that fungi are more genetically related to animals than plants. Using a process called computational phylogenetics, scientists analyzed eukaryotes — any cell with a clearly defined nucleus — and found that fungi and humans form a biological clade, meaning the two organisms share a common ancestor. This clade is called "opisthokonta," named for the posterior flagellum that propels both animal sperm and fungal spores. Some 1.5 billion years ago, animals and fungi separated from plants, and fungi then separated from animals an estimated 10 million years later. Today, humans share roughly 50% of our DNA with your average fungus. | 
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