Advanced Materials From Fungal Mycelium: Fabrication and Tuning of Physical Properties

Abstract

In this work is presented a new category of self-growing, fibrous, natural composite materials with controlled physical properties that can be produced in large quantities and over wide areas, based on mycelium, the main body of fungi. Mycelia from two types of edible, medicinal fungi, Ganoderma lucidum and Pleurotus ostreatus, have been carefully cultivated, being fed by two bio-substrates: cellulose and cellulose/potato-dextrose, the second being easier to digest by mycelium due to presence of simple sugars in its composition. After specific growing times the mycelia have been processed in order to cease their growth. Depending on their feeding substrate, the final fibrous structures showed different relative concentrations in polysaccharides, lipids, proteins and chitin. Such differences are reflected as alterations in morphology and mechanical properties. The materials grown on cellulose contained more chitin and showed higher Young’s modulus and lower elongation than those grown on dextrose-containing substrates, indicating that the mycelium materials get stiffer when their feeding substrate is harder to digest. All the developed fibrous materials were hydrophobic with water contact angles higher than 120°. The possibility of tailoring mycelium materials’ properties by properly choosing their nutrient substrates paves the way for their use in various scale applications.

Waste‐derived low‐cost mycelium composite construction materials with improved fire safety

“…Glass fines comprise primarily of silica (SiO 2 ) and contain up to 30 wt% organic surface matters including well‐documented fungal macronutrients (C, O, Mg, S, K) and micronutrients (Ca) (Figure ). Industrial wastes have not been used so far in the manufacture of mycelium composites, although mycelium has previously been noted to grow anaerobically from soil particles on nutrient‐free silica gel …”

“…Mycelium composites are a new type of novel, economical, and environmentally sustainable materials that have attracted increasing academic and commercial interests over the past decade . Mycelium is the vegetative growth of filamentous fungi that bonds organic matter through a network of hyphal microfilaments in a natural biological process that can be exploited to produce composite materials . This process is cost‐effective because mycelium can grow on and bind agricultural and industrial waste materials (eg, rice hulls, sugarcane bagasse, wheat, barley straw, and glass fines) that have little or no commercial value and convert them into high‐value composite materials for multiple applications.…”

“…This process is cost‐effective because mycelium can grow on and bind agricultural and industrial waste materials (eg, rice hulls, sugarcane bagasse, wheat, barley straw, and glass fines) that have little or no commercial value and convert them into high‐value composite materials for multiple applications. Furthermore, the wide variety of utilisable substrates coupled with technological improvements in processing means that manufacturers can customise mycelium composites to meet specific structural and functional requirements including impact resistance, fire resistance, and thermal and acoustic insulation …”

Engineering Mycorrhizal Symbioses to Alter Plant Metabolism and Improve Crop Health

“…Fungi are already extensively used in biotechnology to produce antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, pigments, bioethanol, and biomaterials (Bennett, 1998; Adrio and Demain, 2003; Cragg et al, 2015; Haneef et al, 2017). To date, arbuscular mycorrhizae have received less attention, despite their dramatic effect on plant metabolism and host resilience to environmental stresses.…”

Production and characterization of proteases from edible mushrooms cultivated on amazonic tubers

“…The cultivation of mushrooms to produce biocompounds from the combination of mycelium and substrates of different compositions allows one to obtain many compounds of biological activity (Haneef et al, 2017). Pulp of tubers of Dioscorea trifida (cará-roxo), Dioscorea alata (inhame roxo) and Manihot esculenta (macaxeira) can serve as substrates with nutritional properties that can be used to cultivate edible mushrooms and also for the production of biocatalysts as peptidases.…”