Living fungal mycelium with abolished ability to form fruiting bodies is a self-healing substance, which is particularly valuable for further engineering and development as materials sensing environmental changes and secreting signals. Suppression of fruiting body formation is also a useful tool for maintaining the stability of a mycelium-based material with ease and lower cost. The objective of this study was to provide a biochemical solution to regulate the fruiting body formation, which may replace heat killing of mycelium in practice. The concentrations of glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) inhibitors, such as lithium chloride or CHIR99021 trihydrochloride, were found to directly correlate with the development of fruiting bodies in the mushroom forming fungi such as Coprinopsis cinerea and Pleurotus djamor . Sensitive windows to these inhibitors throughout the fungal life cycle were also identified. We suggest the inclusion of GSK-3 inhibitors in the cultivation recipes for inhibiting fruiting body formation and regulating mycelium growth. This is the first report of using a GSK-3 inhibitor to suppress fruiting body formation in living fungal mycelium-based materials. It provides an innovative strategy for easy, reliable, and low cost maintenance of materials containing living fungal mycelium.

The "developmental hourglass" describes the morphological convergence to a conserved form at mid-stages of animal embryogenesis. The molecular hourglass pattern during embryogenesis was also identified across kingdoms. Previously, we reported young fruiting body as the conserved "waist" in mushroom-forming "developmental hourglass". However, its robustness is doubted because of the fungal diversity. Additionally, fungi lack embryogenesis, and develop directly from spore to hyphae with morphological similarities during the transition. Here, we updated the "developmental hourglass" model in the life cycle of fungi, namely, spore germination, vegetative growth, and sexual reproduction. Germinating spores, both sexual and asexual, showed the strongest transcriptomic conservation signals across the phyla Mucoromycota, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. Cross kingdom comparisons revealed high expression levels of "information storage and processing" genes at the waist stages of embryonic and non-embryonic developments in animals, plants, and fungi. The "developmental hourglass" might reflect the mutual transcriptome switches on developmental transitions in eukaryotes that are additional to embryonic organogenesis.

13 Living fungal mycelium with suppressed or abolished fruit-forming ability is a self-healing 14 substance particularly valuable biomaterial for further engineering and development in 15 applications such as monitoring/sensing environmental changes and secreting signals. The 16 ability to suppress fungal fruiting is also a useful tool for maintaining stability (e.g., shape, 17 form) of a mycelium-based biomaterial with ease and lower cost.18 The objective of this present study is to provide a biochemical solution to regulate the fruiting 19 body formation to replace heat killing of mycelium during production. We discovered that 20 GSK-3 activity directly correlates with the development of fruiting bodies in fungi, especially 21 mushroom forming fungi such as Coprinopsis cinerea. By regulating GSK-3 expression and 22 activity, one can control the fungal fruiting body development. 23 We successfully demonstrated that treatment of an inhibitor of GSK-3 kinase activity resulted 24 in acceleration in mycelium growth rate, absence of fruiting body and general decrease in 25 GSK-3 gene expression. Therefore, GSK-3 inhibitor is suggested to be included in the 26 mycelium cultivation recipes for regulating the growth of fungal mycelium and for inhibiting 27 the development of fruiting bodies. This is the first report of using a GSK-3 inhibitor, such as 28 lithium or any other GSK-3 inhibitor, to suppress or abolish fruiting body formation in living 29 fungal mycelium-based biomaterial. It also provides an innovative strategy for easy, reliable, 30 and low cost maintenance of biomaterial containing live fungal mycelium. 31 32 33 Introduction 34 Fungal mycelium-based biomaterials are fast emerging in recent years. Mycelium is the 35 vegetative structure of fungi, mainly composed of natural polymers. Mycelium-based 36 biomaterials have a wide range of applications due to their controlled and tunable properties 37 during growth, its self-assembly, self-healing, environmentally responsive, and biodegradable 38 nature. The dried mycelium has strength, durability, and many other beneficial qualities: it is 39 nontoxic, fire-resistant, mold resistant, water-resistant, and a great thermal insulator, amongst 40 other salient features(1-13). Under proper circumstances, mycelium of many mushroom-41 forming fungi will aggregate to form mushrooms, which are the fruiting body spreading 42 spores (14). Not only the fruiting bodies will cause conformational changes of the mycelium 43 based materials, but also the spores may cause allergy and infection in susceptible population.44 In current production procedures of the mycelium-based materials, whole material are heated 45 or treated with fungicide to kill the living cells, to stop the fruiting body formation(15). Such 46 rendered mycelium-based materials retain few of the benefits of living material. Therefore, 47 new approaches are needed for inhibiting fruiting body formation while keeping the 48 mycelium alive, in order to produce living mycelium-based materials of desirable qualiti...

The use of probiotics to improve health via the modulation of gut microbiota has gained wide attention. The growing volume of investigations of probiotic microorganisms and commercialized probiotic products has created the need for a database to organize the health-promoting functions driven by probiotics reported in academic articles, clinical trials, and patents. Currently, no such database is available. We constructed ProBioQuest to collect up-to-date literature related to probiotics from PubMed.gov, ClinicalTrials.gov, and PatentsView. More than 2.8 million articles were collected by the end of 2021: PubMed.gov: 2 656 818; Clinical Trials.gov: 205 349; PatentsView: 32 536. Automated information technology-assisted procedures enabled us to collect the data continuously, providing the most up-to-date information. Statistical functions and semantic analyses are provided on the website as an advanced search engine, which contributes to the semantic tool of this database for information search and analyses. The semantic analytical output provides categorised search results and functions to enhance further analysis. A keyword bank is included which can display multiple tables of contents. Users can select keywords from different displayed categories to achieve easy filtered searches. Additional information on the searched items can be browsed via the link-out function. ProBioQuest is not only useful to scientists and health professionals, but also to dietary supplement manufacturers and the general public. In this paper, the method we used to build this database-web system is described. Applications of ProBioQuest for several literature-based analyses of probiotics are included as examples of the various uses to which this search engine can be put. ProBioQuest can be accessed free of charge at http://kwanlab.bio.cuhk.edu.hk/PBQ/. Database URL: http://kwanlab.bio.cuhk.edu.hk/PBQ/

The use of probiotics to improve health via the modulation of gut microbiota has gained wide attention. The growing volume of investigations of probiotic microorganisms and commercialized probiotic products has created the need for a database to organize the health-promoting functions driven by probiotics reported in academic articles, clinical trials and patents. We constructed ProBioQuest to collect up-to-date literature related to probiotics from PubMed.gov, ClinicalTrials.gov and PatentsView. More than 2.8 million articles have been collected. Automated information technology-assisted procedures enabled us to collect the data continuously, providing the most up-to-date information. Statistical functions and semantic analyses are provided on the website as an advanced search engine, which contributes to the semantic tool of this database for information search and analyses. The semantic analytical output provides categorized search results and functions to enhance further analysis. A keyword bank is included which can display multiple tables of contents. Users can select keywords from different displayed categories to achieve easily filtered searches. Additional information on the searched items can be browsed via the link-out function. ProBioQuest is not only useful to scientists and health professionals but also to dietary supplement manufacturers and the general public. In this paper, the method we used to build this database-web system is described. Applications of ProBioQuest for several literature-based analyses of probiotics are included as examples of the various uses of this search engine. ProBioQuest can be accessed free of charge at http://kwanlab.bio.cuhk.edu.hk/PBQ/. Database URL: http://kwanlab.bio.cuhk.edu.hk/PBQ/