Made from fungal networks cultivated using agricultural waste and water, the material has already met key international safety benchmarks – marking an important step toward real‑world use.

Unlike the traditional tray method, the new pulp-based approach gave researchers more control over the final material, allowing them to adjust its properties, add colors and textures, or layer the mycelium material onto cotton fabrics.

Replacing styrofoam in a couple of applications is one thing- replacing it as a category is a very different problem, and we’ve learned how hard that is over the past year.

“Psilocybin therapy has the potential to stop a lot of unnecessary suffering,”

Original article

It may be hard to believe mushrooms can grow in diesel-soaked soil, but in one experiment, they did exactly that. In the late 1990’s, researchers ran a field test using oyster mushroom mycelium, and within weeks, oyster mushrooms were coming up straight out of the blackened dirt. That trial helped spark interest in using fungi to clean up pollution, even though its actual results were mixed.

many wood-decaying fungi have the right chemical tools to break down pollutants. They work because a lot of industrial pollutants have a chemical structure similar to plant fibers, and fungi are experts at breaking down these fibers.

Instead of weaving fibers, the team grew dense mats of mycelium, the threadlike filaments of which naturally intertwine into cohesive sheets. The researchers then soaked the material in glycerol—a syrupy compound that acts as a plasticizer, making the mycelium softer and more flexible without killing it. The result was a supple, living textile.

When supplied with nutrients, the fabric sprouts a layer of fuzzy fungal filaments across its surface, effectively renewing itself.

Clothing made from this is not ready-to-wear. And even if the technology matures, it won’t solve fashion’s sustainability problem.

Found in the middle of a city park with many pine trees around, I think it's fly agaric.

It was common on Christmas cards in Victorian and Edwardian times as a symbol of good luck and its colours are thought to have been the inspiration for Santa Claus's red and white suit.

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/fungi-and-lichens/fly-agaric/

"We have created a high-quality, functional material from an industrial waste product - without additional fossil raw materials. In comparison to a conventional circuit board, fungal mycelium has up to 56% lower CO2 footprint and can be easily and safely dissolved in water at the end of its life."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/48634214

Summary: the mushroom Lanmaoa asiatica makes careless eaters see little people using toxins which other shrooms haven't discovered.

"Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their published paper.

"This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica."

Many researchers suspect that Prototaxites was an early type of fungus. But in a study published January 21 [2026] in the journal Science Advances, a team argues that one species is chemically and structurally distinct from fungi, hinting that the mysterious genus likely represents a previously undiscovered, extinct branch of life.

Scientists created the first-ever map of this vast underground fungal network and found it could stretch to the sun and back more than a billion times.

Global topsoils hold an estimated 110 quadrillion kilometers of fungal network, a distance equivalent to traveling to the sun and back a billion times.

The study: Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks

I found a neat mushroom on a walk today. It was no bigger than my thumb, pure white, very very slimy, and the typical cap and stem shape. I need a tool that allows me to find mushrooms based on visible characteristics like this. It was too small to take a spore print and I did not want to carry it all the way home on account of the slimyness. I am so tired of slogging through AI generated articles about the top 10 slimy mushrooms that just have absolutely nothing to do with what I am looking for.

Thanks

A commercial mycelium material growth cycle runs between five and ten days from inoculation to harvest-ready composite. In that window, a living fungal network threads through agricultural waste, bonding the material as it grows, producing a composite shape without casting, pressing, or chemical binders. The binder is the organism. The process runs at room temperature. The energy input is a fraction of what conventional foam manufacturing requires.

A common fungus can break down hard-to-recycle construction waste and turn it into sustainable insulation that rivals traditional and petrochemical-based options,

“One of the biggest challenges in construction is what happens to materials at the end of their life.

“ the fungus [is] doing two jobs at once; creating a sustainable insulation material and transforming challenging, and potentially harmful, waste into something valuable.”

I spoke with Donna about her work, how it resonates with Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, and her excitement at finding a kindred spirit who approaches understanding fungi as she does biology (just one of her many interests). Here is an edited excerpt of our conversation in which we range from these subjects and the transformational character of fungi to radical methods of inquiry and back again. I hope you will enjoy our fungi-inspired meanderings and learn as much from Donna’s many insights as I did!

More on wiki

Tiny organisms on the ground – bacteria and fungi – have a “superpower” that allows them to reach up into the atmosphere and pull down the rain, according to a recent study.

"At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'" [...] "It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there."

• Estimated to be more than 2,400 years old, one alerce tree in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park hosts about twice as much fungal diversity underground as younger alerce trees, a team of researchers found.
• The scientists found 361 fungal DNA sequences unique to this tree, indicating that older trees harbor a vaster fungal network that benefits other plants on the forest floor.
• Real estate expansion, climate change and infrastructure projects continue to threaten the alerce, which is listed as endangered. Although Chile protects the species, experts say older trees that support complex ecosystems should enjoy higher levels of protection and limited interaction from humans.