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Did you know that there are 10 times more species of fungi than plants? That with each woodland footfall we are stepping on kilometers of fungal threads? Or that with every breath we inhale 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, these incredible creatures have the ‘wick factor’. The vast majority of fungi are decomposers: they get their food by scavenging nutrients from dead and dying organisms, and we often think of anything involving decay as quite creepy. Plus, toadstools have been blamed for all kinds of mischief, from spoiling virgin flowers to melting your liver in a matter of days (very possible, if you eat certain species).
Nor does it help that fungi are primarily microscopic. When we see a mushroom 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 bundle of fungal threads called ‘hyphae’, which are hidden from view and seek nutrients inside wood or soil. It wasn’t until we had microscopes powerful enough to see fungi clearly that we were able to understand their metabolism and finally understand how vast the scope of fungi really is.
Fungi are present in the microbiomes of all living things and are even present in the atmosphere. But they live primarily in soil and on plants, where they are integral to forest and field ecosystem well-being, recycling nutrients and sequestering carbon.
Fungi are responsible for countless duties in nature, and the molecules they have evolved to perform those duties represent a range of opportunities that could help us solve some of the world’s most complex problems . It’s an exciting time, when bioprospectors, entrepreneurs and ecologists are all rethinking what the future might look like. And what they’re seeing is that the future is fungi.
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How can fungi save agriculture in a warming world?
You might not know it, but when you look at a plant, you are also looking at a fungus. This is because most, if not all, terrestrial plants host thread-like fungi between their cells. Fungi feast on plant-made sugars, and in return, they help plants tolerate stressful environmental conditions such as salt floods, 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 damage its cells. But unlike you and me, plants don’t produce helpful chemicals to counter the effects of that stress; Instead, it is endophytic fungi living between plant cells that do this.
These impossibly thin fungal threads emit an arsenal of compounds that soothe oxidative stress in plants, and also participate in the chemistry that enables plants to use water efficiently. This helps plants with drought problems as well as those suffering from exposure to excessive heat or salt.
Researchers have found that stress-reducing endophytic fungi can be transferred from their host plants to crop plants 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 bear fruit in similarly warm conditions.
To fungi, panic grass and tomato are one and the same thing, and the implications are huge: In a rapidly warming world, endophytic fungi have the potential to protect our food supply.
How could fungi transform mental health treatment?
‘Magic’ mushrooms like this one contain hallucinogens that could be used to help treat mental illness © Alamy
There has been no new psychiatric therapy for decades. Most drugs used today are next-generation versions of drugs developed in the 1950s. But in the past 15 years, an old class of drugs has become new again, and one of the most promising of these drugs is derived from mushrooms.
Fifty years ago, researchers around the world began intensively investigating the potential of psilocybin and LSD to help people suffering from a variety of mental disorders. The research was incredibly promising, but as these drugs entered the rowdy, anti-authoritarian youth culture of the 1960s, fewer and fewer scientists were willing to work with them. By 1968, the United Nations was urging countries to ban psilocybin and LSD.
But times change, harsh conditions soften and today those drugs are being researched again with surprising results. Researchers have found that when combined with therapy, psilocybin – a molecule present in nearly 200 species of Psilocybe Mushroom genus – May be effective in alleviating many disorders including OCD, PTSD, depression and anxiety due to life-threatening illness. Studies are also underway to investigate its effect on anorexia nervosa and Alzheimer’s.
Psilocybin may work by suppressing some neural pathways in the brain and engaging others, and in the process, it disrupts rigid patterns of thought, as in a PTSD patient who replays traumatic experiences over and over again. Psilocybin appears to cause a rapid onset of antidepressant and anti-addiction effects that are persistent over time. Seeing such results, governments are paying attention. And there are patients too.
- alert:LSD and psilocybin are Class A drugs under UK law. Anyone caught in possession of such substances can face up to seven years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.
How fungi could revolutionize building construction and product design
Take something as simple as polystyrene packing chips. We use them to keep valuables safe during shipping, but they do not biodegrade. But what if we replaced them with Fungal Chips? They’re just as good at protecting Mother’s china and you can just toss them in the compost bin when you’re done.
Fungi have great potential as an environmentally sustainable material for product design and manufacturing components. That ability is based on the fact that you can grow the mycelium – the non-fruiting part of the fungus, which consists of a network of fine threads – into any shape or size you desire, then bake it like a pot in a furnace. Can The result is a strong, lightweight material that has structural integrity, but is as soft or rigid as you like. In addition, the food source used to grow the fungus may impart special properties such as adding fire resistance to the final product.
The first company to explore fungi as an ingredient was Ecovative in the US. They have produced a wide range of products, from packaging for companies such as Dell Computer to textiles such as leather for fashion designers such as Stella McCartney. And this is just the beginning. The fungus has also been grown in soft foam substitutes, bricks, particleboard, electrical circuit boards, fire-resistant insulation and household items such as 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’ fungus-based habitats on the Moon and other planets. When it comes to fungi, technology is advancing rapidly.
How can fungi clean up our planet?
A cluster of branched, thread-like hyphae stretched over a wooden block, in a process called ramification © Getty Images
Fungi do not have chlorophyll like plants, so to obtain nutrients, they stretch their long, thin hyphae through their food. Then their cells will secrete digestive enzymes, which break down the bonds holding their food together, allowing them to absorb palatable molecules like carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen, and water. This power to break down complex molecules into simpler molecules is the key to mycoremediation, the application of fungi to clean up polluted sites.
These can be employed in all manner of ways, from separating polyaromatic hydrocarbons (think petroleum byproducts, sewage sludge and ash) to digesting cigarette butts, to a range of nitroaromatic compounds such as explosives, dyes, herbicides and insecticides. Up to ashtrays made of fungus. ,
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’re learning to do the same for plastics. In the last few years, researchers have identified a soil fungus that can break down polyurethane in just a few weeks, and other species with similar abilities have been discovered.
It is challenging to apply these fungicides in an in-situ and cost-effective manner. But there are also 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 it to exist on polluted soil, but also clean it up in the process.
Other innovations include downstream industries, such as The Onion Collective in Somerset. This biorecycling facility hopes to feed fungi with the plastic and create useful products such as leather replacement materials with the resulting mycelium.
How can fungi save bees?
Reishi mushroom © Alamy
Bee pollination is important to many of our crops. But bee populations are declining around the world; In China, farmers have been forced to pollinate their apple trees by hand. This decline is attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition characterized by the sudden death or disappearance of worker bees in the hive.
Widespread in the US, Canada and Europe, CCD kills billions of bees each year. Why? One theory holds that exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides affects the immune system of bees. As a result, they cannot fight off the virus spread by the parasitic hive mite. And that’s where mushrooms can come in.
In the mid-1980s, mycologist and mushroom supplement manufacturer Paul Stamets noticed that his bees were drinking droplets of liquid secreted by mushroom mycelium that surrounded a pile of wood chips.
For years, they assumed that the bees were collecting the sugar. And then it occurred to him, perhaps the bees were collecting medicines. This concept came to fruition in 2018 when Stamets, along with researchers at Washington State University, found that bees fed tinder fungus extract (fomes fomentarius) and reishi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum) experienced a significant reduction in their viral load, particularly lethal deformed-winged virus.
Researchers aren’t sure yet whether the extract is helping the bees’ natural immune system fight off the virus or actually destroying the virus, but future studies will tell. We may soon set up our own bird feeders as well as medicinal dispensaries for bees.
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Source: www.sciencefocus.com
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