Mushroom magic: 5 ways fungus-based technology will
change the world
Did you know
there are 10 times more species of fungi than plants? That with every woodland
footfall we are stepping on kilometres of fungal threads? Or that with every
breath, we breathe in up to 10 fungal spores? If you don’t, you are not alone.
Most of us are
ignorant about the fungi kingdom. Perhaps it’s because, for many people, these
incredible organisms have the ‘ick factor’. A large number of fungi are
decomposers: they get their food by harvesting nutrients from dead and dying
organisms, and we often associate anything to do with decay as rather creepy.
What’s more, toadstools have been credited with all kinds of mischief, from
deflowering virgins (not possible) to melting your liver in a matter of days
(very possible, if you eat certain species).
Nor has it
helped that fungi are primarily microscopic. When we see mushrooms growing in
the wild, we are only seeing the fruiting body of the organism, which produces
spores for reproduction. The rest of it is a mass of fungal threads called
‘hyphae’, which are hidden from sight and forage for nutrients inside wood or
soil. It wasn’t until we had powerful microscopes to see fungi clearly that we
were able to understand their metabolism and finally get a sense of how huge
the realm of fungi really is.
Fungi are
present in the microbiomes of all living things and even exist in the
atmosphere. But they mainly reside in soil and plants, where they are integral
to the wellbeing of forest and field ecosystems, to the recycling of nutrients,
and to the sequestration of carbon.
Fungi are
responsible for countless duties in nature, and the molecules they have evolved
to fulfil those duties represent a range of opportunities that may help us
solve some of the world’s most vexing problems. This is an exciting time, when
bioprospectors, entrepreneurs and ecologists are all rethinking what the future
could look like. And what they are seeing is that the future is fungal.
How fungi could save agriculture in a warming world
You probably
don’t know it, but when you look at a plant, you are looking at fungi, too.
That’s because most, if not all, terrestrial plants host thread-like fungi
between their cells. The fungi feast on sugars the plant makes, and in
exchange, they help plants tolerate stressful environmental conditions like
salt inundation, drought and high temperatures.
You probably
don’t know it, but when you look at a plant, you are looking at fungi, too.
That’s because most, if not all, terrestrial plants host thread-like fungi
between their cells. The fungi feast on sugars the plant makes, and in
exchange, they help plants tolerate stressful environmental conditions like
salt inundation, drought and high temperatures.
When a plant
is exposed to drought it suffers from oxidative stress – an imbalance of free
radicals and antioxidants – which can hurt its cells. But unlike you and me,
plants don’t produce helpful chemicals to counter the effects of that stress;
instead, it’s the endophytic fungi living between the cells of the plants that
do.
These
impossibly thin fungal threads emit an arsenal of compounds that calm oxidative
stress in plants, and also participate in the chemistry that makes plants use
water efficiently. This helps plants with a drought problem, but also those
suffering from extreme heat or salt exposure.
Researchers
have found that stress-reducing endophytic fungi can be transferred from their
host plants to crop plants in order to help them survive in a warming world.
For example, the fungus that allows panic grass to grow in soil temperatures of
up to 65°C also allows tomatoes to grow and fruit in similarly hot conditions.
To the fungus,
panic grass and tomatoes are the same thing, and the implications are enormous:
in a rapidly warming world, endophytic fungi have the potential to protect our
food supply.
How fungi could transform mental health treatment
There hasn’t
been a novel psychiatric medicine in decades. The majority of medications used
today are next-generation versions of drugs developed in the 1950s. But in the
last 15 years, an old class of drugs is new again, and one of the most
promising of these is derived from a mushroom.
Fifty years
ago, researchers worldwide began an intense investigation into the
possibilities of psilocybin and LSD to help people with a range of mental
disorders. The research was incredibly promising, but as these drugs seeped
into the rowdy, anti-establishment youth culture of the 1960s, fewer and fewer
scientists were willing to work with them. By 1968, the United Nations was
urging countries to prohibit psilocybin and LSD.
But times
change, rigid positions soften, and today those drugs are being researched
again, with astonishing results. Researchers have found that when combined with
therapy, psilocybin – a molecule present in some 200 species of the Psilocybe
mushroom genus – may be effective at easing a host of disorders, including OCD,
PTSD, depression, and anxiety due to life-threatening illness. There are also
ongoing studies to investigate its effect on anorexia nervosa and Alzheimer’s.
Psilocybin may
work by suppressing certain neural pathways in the brain and engaging others,
and in the process, it disrupts rigid patterns of thought, as in the PTSD
patient who replays traumatic experiences over and over. Psilocybin seems to
lead to the rapid onset of antidepressant and anti-addictive effects that are
persistent over time. With results like these, governments are paying
attention. And so are patients.
WARNING: LSD
and psilocybin are Class A drugs according to UK law. Anyone caught in
possession of such substances could face up to seven years in prison, an unlimited
fine, or both.
How fungi could revolutionise building and product
design
Take something
as simple as polystyrene packing chips. We use them for keeping valuables safe
during shipping, but they don’t biodegrade. But what if we replaced them with
fungal chips? They’re just as good at protecting Mum’s china and you can toss
them into the compost bin when you’re finished.
Fungi have
enormous potential as an environmentally sustainable material for product
design and building components. That potential is based on the fact that you
can grow mycelium – the non-fruiting part of the fungus, consisting of a
network of fine threads – into any shape or size you want, then bake it like a
pot in a kiln. The result is a strong, light material that has structural
integrity, but as soft or rigid as you like. What’s more, the food source used
to grow the fungus can lend particular attributes to the end product, like
adding fire resistance.
The first
company to explore fungi as a material was Ecovative in the US. They have
produced a range of products, from packaging for companies like Dell computers
to pleather-like textiles for fashion designers like Stella McCartney. And
that’s just the beginning. Fungi have also been grown into soft foam
alternatives, bricks, particleboard, electrical circuit boards, fire-resistant
insulation, and household objects like vases, chairs, lampshades, even slippers.
But why think
so small? At NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, the
myco-architecture project is working on technologies that could ‘grow’
fungi-based habitats on moons and other planets. When it comes to fungi,
technology is mushrooming.
How fungi could clean up our planet
Fungi don’t
have chlorophyll like plants, so to get nutrients, they spread their long, thin
hyphae through their food. Their cells will then seep out digestive enzymes,
which break down the bonds that hold together their food, allowing them to
absorb tasty molecules, like carbon, phosphorous, nitrogen and water. This
power to break down complex molecules into simpler ones is the key to
mycoremediation, the application of fungi in order to clean polluted sites.
They can be
employed in all kinds of ways, from the disassembly of polyaromatic
hydrocarbons (think petroleum byproducts, sewage sludge and ash) to an array of
nitroaromatic compounds like explosives, dyes, herbicides and insecticides, to
ashtrays made of fungi that digest cigarette butts.
Basically, any
carbon-based product is food for fungi. Fungi have co-evolved with natural
materials so they know how to break them down, and now they are learning to do
the same for plastics. In the last few years, researchers have identified a
soil fungus that can break down polyurethane in a matter of weeks, and other
species have been discovered with similar capabilities.
Applying these
fungi in situ, and in a cost-effective way, is challenging. But there are
exciting new approaches. Researchers in Canada have discovered a fungus living
within the roots of dandelions growing on waste products on Canada’s Athabasca
oil sands. When this fungus was introduced to other plants, it endowed them
with its superpower, allowing them to exist on the polluted soil, but also
clean it in the process.
Other
innovations involve downstreaming industries, like the Onion Collective in
Somerset. This biorecycling facility hopes to feed fungi with plastics and make
useful products like leather replacement materials with the resulting mycelium.
How fungi could save the bees
Honeybee
pollination is important for many of our crops. But bee populations are in
decline all over the world; in China, farmers have been forced to pollinate
their apple trees by hand. This decline is credited to Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD), characterised by the sudden death or disappearance of worker bees in a
hive.
Widespread in
the US, Canada and Europe, CCD kills billions of bees each year. Why? One
theory posits the bees’ immune systems are compromised by exposure to
neonicotinoid pesticides. As a result, they can’t fight viruses spread by a
parasitic hive mite. And that’s where mushrooms might come in.
In the
mid-1980s, the mycologist and mushroom supplement producer Paul Stamets noticed
that his honeybees were sipping droplets of liquid emitted by mushroom mycelium
that had colonised a pile of wood chips.
For years, he
assumed the bees were collecting sugar. And then it occurred to him, maybe the
bees were collecting medicine. That concept was borne out in 2018 when Stamets,
along with researchers at Washington State University, found that honeybees fed
an extract from tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) and reishi mushroom
(Ganoderma lucidum) experienced a significant reduction in their viral load,
particularly the lethal deformed-wing virus.
The
researchers are not sure yet whether the extracts are helping the bees’ natural
immune system fight off the virus or actually destroying the virus, but future
studies will tell. We may soon be putting out medicinal dispensaries for bees
along with our bird feeders.
By Eugenia
Bone Published: 23rd June, 2022
Source:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/fungus-technology/
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