They infect trapdoor spiders, and it’s one of the very few cordyceps that are purple, which is a cool feature. We don’t know much about this fungal group because it’s very understudied.

The University of Bayreuth's Biomaterials research group has, for the first time, successfully applied the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool to spiders. Following the genetic modification, the spiders ...