For years fungi have been little studied, this is a huge untapped potential, in fact only 6-8% of the world’s existing fungi have been identified so far.
There are two main reasons for this: DNA sequencing technologies have only recently arrived, and a true dedicated taxonomy of fungi has long been lacking. On the other hand, they are being talked about again because of the countless possibilities they offer in terms of ecology and beyond.
The fungal mycelium
Fungi were the first to land on Earth 1.3 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years before plants. Their evolutionary advantage is attributable to the mycelium of which they are composed, which in turn consists of hyphae, the mass of branching that forms the vegetative part of the fungus.
Mycelium holds soils together; it can support a weight of up to 30,000 times its own mass. Hyphae intertwine in the root tips of plants at the cellular level. In this way, individual plants are joined to each other by an underground network-a vast, highly intricate collaborative structure called the Wood Wide Web. To date, more than 90 percent of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi species because a multidirectional transfer of nutrients to plants occurs through the mycelium.
The Hidden Order, Sheldrake’s book.
The notoriety of mushrooms has also increased recently thanks to Merlin Sheldrake, a British biologist, popularizer and author of the book ‘The Hidden Order-the Secret Life of Mushrooms.’
Sheldrake offers the reader a cross-cutting treatment of biology, literature, ecology, and technology, devoted entirely to the mushroom kingdom.
Secret resources of mushrooms
In addition to uses in food and nutritional processing (1), Sheldrake tells us that mushrooms hold amazing properties that are adaptable to various sectors and applications.
1) Mycorrhization
Paul Stamets, mycologist, founder of Fungi Perfecti, a company with the goal of bridging people and fungi and author of the TED talk in 6 ways mushrooms can save the world, invented Mycobooms to biodegrade oil.
The Mycobooms are floating arms of straw filled with mycelium from Pleurotus or oyster mushrooms that produce enzymes, the peroxidases, that can break down petroleum, particularly of the more complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), into smaller and smaller aromatic rings that make the PAHs available for bacteria and other organisms to finish the job. Mycobooms are totally biodegradable and use hemp socks about 6 meters long that can float for up to 4 months.
Another team of researchers found that the mycelium of Pleurotus can grow among human waste, for example on used diapers (2) or cigarette butts, while in India they are experimenting with their use for the degradation of agricultural waste, in fact with enzymatic burning of the material, the amount of biomass burned by combustion is less and improves air quality (3).
Also found are studies of how fungi can break down pesticides, explosives, some types of plastics and many drugs. Stamets, in Mycelium Running, describes how the fungi Trametes and Psilocybe azurescens manage to break down a potent neurotoxin, dimethylphosphonate. Because of these capabilities, mycelium from mushroom cultivation also comes up as the solution to filter water from E. coli, cholera, listeria and other pathogens; phosphates, fertilizers, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals and petroleum-based toxic wastes.
2) Agricultural workers
Mycorrhizal fungi can improve crop quality as shown by studies on several horticultural species (4), provide plants with more than 80 percent nitrogen and 100 percent phosphorus, can also increase plants’ ability to compete with weeds; they also improve their resistance to diseases by strengthening their immune system. They also make them less sensitive to drought and heat and more resistant to increasing salinity with climate change (5) and heavy metals. They even enhance the ability of plants to repel pest attacks by stimulating the production of defensive chemicals.
Putting this knowledge into practice, however, is not so straightforward; mycorrhizal associations do not always lead to increased yields; in some cases they can reduce them. In fact, if mycorrhizal species were poorly associated, the relationship could be more harmful than beneficial to the plants or they could replace, in the case of opportunistic fungal species, local ones.
3) Sensory amplifiers
An experiment on strawberries also showed that growing the same species of strawberries with different species of fungi changed the taste of the fruit. Basil produces different profiles of its aromatic oil, depending on the mushrooms with which it grows, as do mint and cilantro.
Some mushrooms make tomatoes sweeter, others increase the concentration of iron and carotenoids in lettuce or the antioxidant activity of artichoke or the concentration of medicinal compounds in St. John’s Wort and Echinacea (6).
4) Vaccine manufacturers
The use of edible mushrooms has not yet been explored for the production of low-cost vaccines needed by low-income populations, although some studies (7) have shown how Pleurotus produces immunomodulatory compounds.
Pleurotus
emerges as a host for innovative vaccine development due to the fact that edible biomass can be produced at low cost in a short period of time, its high biosynthetic capacity, the production of immunomodulatory compounds, and the availability of genetic transformation methods.
The use of other fungal species, such as Saccharomyces and Pichia, major strains studied in the biopharmaceutical field, is limited to the production of conventional and expensive vaccines. In addition, a study that appeared in Science in 2019 reports that a genetically modified strain of Metarhizium, eliminated almost all mosquitoes found in a ‘near-natural’ environment in Burkina Faso. The authors propose using it to fight the spread of malaria (8).
Micomaterials
The entanglements of mycelium create a dense living framework that, when dried, can be transformed into an inert material. The outer layer of the meadow mushroom can be used to fabricate a graphite substitute material in lithium batteries. The mycelium of some species can be used as an effective substitute for human skin and is used to promote wound healing.
In the United States, the company Ecovative, is developing building materials from mycelium. The U.S.-based company also produces packaging materials produced from mycelium designed to replace plastic, textile fibers to replace animal skin, and even building materials to replace bricks, cement, and chipboard. Micro-materials are compostable, lightweight, water-resistant, and fire retardant. They are harder than concrete when subjected to bending and resist compression better than wooden structures.
The future is mushrooms
Fungi are everywhere but it is easy to miss them (6), shifting our attention to them would open up endless possibilities and solutions in responding to current ecological, nutritional and health emergencies.
Giulia Pietrollini
Notes
1) Dongo and Della Penna, Proteins from fungi and micro fungi, mycoproteins, the ABCs. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade) 12.10.2022
2) R.Espinosa-Valdemar,S turpin-Marion,I. Delfìn-Alcalà,A.Velasquez-Morillas,Disposable diapers biodegradation by the Fungus Pleurotus ostreatus, in “Waste Management,” 31,2011, pp. 1683-1688.
3) S. Prasad, An ingenious way to combat India’s suffocating pollution, in “Washington Post,” 2018.
4) Colla G, Rouphael Y, Di Mattia E, El-Nakhel C, Cardarelli M. Co-inoculation of Glomus intraradices and Trichoderma atroviride acts as a biostimulant to promote growth, yield and nutrient uptake of vegetable crops. J Sci Food Agric. 2015 Jun;95(8):1706-15. doi: 10.1002/jsfa.6875. Epub 2014 Sep 16. PMID: 25123953.
5) Kashyap PL, Rai P, Srivastava AK, Kumar S. Trichoderma for climate resilient agriculture. World J Microbiol Biotechnol. 2017 Aug;33(8):155. doi: 10.1007/s11274-017-2319-1. Epub 2017 Jul 10. PMID: 28695465.
6) M.Sheldrake, Entangled life. How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Future. 2020
7) A. S. Pérez-Martínez, S. A. Acevedo-Padilla, M. Bibbins-Martínez, J. Galván-Alonso, S. Rosales-Mendoza, A perspective on the use of Pleurotus for the development of convenient fungi-made oral subunit vaccines, Vaccine,Volume 33, Issue 1,2015, Pages 25-33, ISSN 0264-410X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.10.059.
8) B. Lovett, E. Bilgo, S. Millogo, A. Outarra, I. Sare, E. Gnambani, R.K. Dabire, A.Diabate,R.J. Leger, Transgenic Metharizium rapidly kills mosquitoes in a malaria-endemic region of Burkina Faso, in “Science,” 364,2019,pp.894-897.
Graduated in industrial biotechnology and passionate about sustainable development.
