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International Journal of Molecular... Dec 2019Depression is a common and severe neuropsychiatric disorder that is one of the leading causes of global disease burden. Although various anti-depressants are currently... (Review)
Review
Depression is a common and severe neuropsychiatric disorder that is one of the leading causes of global disease burden. Although various anti-depressants are currently available, their efficacies are barely adequate and many have side effects. also known as Lion's mane mushroom, has been shown to have various health benefits, including antioxidative, antidiabetic, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antihyperglycemic, and hypolipidemic effects. It has been used to treat cognitive impairment, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Bioactive compounds extracted from the mycelia and fruiting bodies of have been found to promote the expression of neurotrophic factors that are associated with cell proliferation such as nerve growth factors. Although antidepressant effects of have not been validated and compared to the conventional antidepressants, based on the neurotrophic and neurogenic pathophysiology of depression, may be a potential alternative medicine for the treatment of depression. This article critically reviews the current literature on the potential benefits of as a treatment for depressive disorder as well as its mechanisms underlying the antidepressant-like activities.
Topics: Basidiomycota; Biological Products; Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor; Clinical Trials as Topic; Depressive Disorder; Diterpenes; Humans; Indoles; Mycelium; Nerve Growth Factors
PubMed: 31881712
DOI: 10.3390/ijms21010163 -
Current Biology : CB Jun 2023For more than 400 million years, mycorrhizal fungi and plants have formed partnerships that are crucial to the emergence and functioning of global ecosystems. The... (Review)
Review
For more than 400 million years, mycorrhizal fungi and plants have formed partnerships that are crucial to the emergence and functioning of global ecosystems. The importance of these symbiotic fungi for plant nutrition is well established. However, the role of mycorrhizal fungi in transporting carbon into soil systems on a global scale remains under-explored. This is surprising given that ∼75% of terrestrial carbon is stored belowground and mycorrhizal fungi are stationed at a key entry point of carbon into soil food webs. Here, we analyze nearly 200 datasets to provide the first global quantitative estimates of carbon allocation from plants to the mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi. We estimate that global plant communities allocate 3.93 Gt COe per year to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, 9.07 Gt COe per year to ectomycorrhizal fungi, and 0.12 Gt COe per year to ericoid mycorrhizal fungi. Based on this estimate, 13.12 Gt of COe fixed by terrestrial plants is, at least temporarily, allocated to the underground mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi per year, equating to ∼36% of current annual CO emissions from fossil fuels. We explore the mechanisms by which mycorrhizal fungi affect soil carbon pools and identify approaches to increase our understanding of global carbon fluxes via plant-fungal pathways. Our estimates, although based on the best available evidence, are imperfect and should be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless, our estimations are conservative, and we argue that this work confirms the significant contribution made by mycorrhizal associations to global carbon dynamics. Our findings should motivate their inclusion both within global climate and carbon cycling models, and within conservation policy and practice.
Topics: Mycorrhizae; Ecosystem; Carbon; Fungi; Plants; Soil; Mycelium; Plant Roots; Soil Microbiology
PubMed: 37279689
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.027 -
Scientific Reports Jan 2022Electrical activity of fungus Pleurotus ostreatus is characterised by slow (h) irregular waves of baseline potential drift and fast (min) action potential likes spikes...
Electrical activity of fungus Pleurotus ostreatus is characterised by slow (h) irregular waves of baseline potential drift and fast (min) action potential likes spikes of the electrical potential. An exposure of the myceliated substrate to a chloroform vapour lead to several fold decrease of the baseline potential waves and increase of their duration. The chloroform vapour also causes either complete cessation of spiking activity or substantial reduction of the spiking frequency. Removal of the chloroform vapour from the growth containers leads to a gradual restoration of the mycelium electrical activity.
Topics: Action Potentials; Anesthetics, Inhalation; Chloroform; Mycelium; Pleurotus; Time Factors; Volatilization
PubMed: 35013424
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-04172-0 -
Bio Systems Feb 2022Fungal electronics is a family of living electronic devices made of mycelium bound composites or pure mycelium. Fungal electronic devices are capable of changing their... (Review)
Review
Fungal electronics is a family of living electronic devices made of mycelium bound composites or pure mycelium. Fungal electronic devices are capable of changing their impedance and generating spikes of electrical potential in response to external control parameters. Fungal electronics can be embedded into fungal materials and wearables or used as stand alone sensing and computing devices.
Topics: Electronics; Fungi; Mycelium
PubMed: 34979157
DOI: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2021.104588 -
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Oct 2019Glucosamine (GlcN) is an amine sugar, in which a hydroxyl group of glucose is replaced with an amino group. It is an important part of the polysaccharides chitin and... (Review)
Review
Glucosamine (GlcN) is an amine sugar, in which a hydroxyl group of glucose is replaced with an amino group. It is an important part of the polysaccharides chitin and chitosan and is highly hydrophilic. It is also an important compound required for the formation of cartilage cells and represents one of the elementary units of the cartilage matrix and joint fluid. GlcN has been widely used in food, cosmetics, health care, and pharmaceutical industries. This paper fully addresses the categories and biomanufacturing methods of GlcN, including its production by fermentation with wild-type as well as engineered microorganisms and enzymatic catalysis with a series of chitinolytic enzymes. However, GlcN is usually produced from glucose by fermentation in a coupled manner with N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc). Enzymatic catalysis is thus a specific pathway for production of GlcN where chitin can be directly hydrolyzed to GlcN. In industry, GlcN produced with fungal mycelium as raw materials (plant GlcN) is thought as a high-end product because of vegetarian and non-transgenosis. In our opinion, more studies should be performed in order to develop a competitive enzymatic pathway using Aspergillus niger mycelium for the preparation of high-end GlcN.
Topics: Aspergillus niger; Biocatalysis; Fermentation; Glucosamine; Industrial Microbiology; Metabolic Networks and Pathways; Mycelium
PubMed: 31440792
DOI: 10.1007/s00253-019-10084-x -
Plant Signaling & Behavior Dec 2022Whether through root secretions or by emitting volatile organic compounds, plant communication has been well-documented. While electrical activity has been documented in...
Whether through root secretions or by emitting volatile organic compounds, plant communication has been well-documented. While electrical activity has been documented in plants and mycorrhizal bodies on the individual and ramet, electrical propagation as a means of communication plants has been hypothesized but understudied. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that plants can communicate with one another via conductively isolated mycelial pathways. We created a bio-electric circuit linking two plants using a mycelial network grown from a blend of mycorrhizal fungi which was directly inoculated onto potato dextrose agar, or onto the host plants placed on the agar. The mycelium that grew was forced to cross, or "bridge," an air gap between the two islands of agar - thus forming the isolated conductive pathway between plants. Using this plant-fungal biocircuit we assessed electrical propagation between and . We found that electrical signals were reliably conducted across the mycelial bridges from one plant to another upon the induction of a wound response. Our findings provide evidence that mechanical input can be communicated between plant species and opens the door to testing how this information can affect plant and fungal physiology.
Topics: Agar; Mycorrhizae; Plants; Mycelium
PubMed: 36384396
DOI: 10.1080/15592324.2022.2129291 -
Scientific Reports Sep 2022Living substrates are capable for nontrivial mappings of electrical signals due to the substrate nonlinear electrical characteristics. This property can be used to...
Living substrates are capable for nontrivial mappings of electrical signals due to the substrate nonlinear electrical characteristics. This property can be used to realise Boolean functions. Input logical values are represented by amplitude or frequency of electrical stimuli. Output logical values are decoded from electrical responses of living substrates. We demonstrate how logical circuits can be implemented in mycelium bound composites. The mycelium bound composites (fungal materials) are getting growing recognition as building, packaging, decoration and clothing materials. Presently the fungal materials are passive. To make the fungal materials adaptive, i.e. sensing and computing, we should embed logical circuits into them. We demonstrate experimental laboratory prototypes of many-input Boolean functions implemented in fungal materials from oyster fungi P. ostreatus. We characterise complexity of the functions discovered via complexity of the space-time configurations of one-dimensional cellular automata governed by the functions. We show that the mycelium bound composites can implement representative functions from all classes of cellular automata complexity including the computationally universal. The results presented will make an impact in the field of unconventional computing, experimental demonstration of purposeful computing with fungi, and in the field of intelligent materials, as the prototypes of computing mycelium bound composites.
Topics: Algorithms; Fungi; Mycelium; Smart Materials
PubMed: 36151275
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-20080-3 -
Lab on a Chip Sep 2023Mycelium-based materials have seen a surge in popularity in the manufacturing industry in recent years. This study aims to build a lab-scale experimental facility to...
Mycelium-based materials have seen a surge in popularity in the manufacturing industry in recent years. This study aims to build a lab-scale experimental facility to investigate mycelium growth under a well-controlled temperature and humidity environment and explore how substrates of very different chemical and mechanical properties can affect the microscopic morphology of the mycelium fibers during growth. Here, we design and build a customized green tent with good thermal and humidity insulation for controlling the temperature and humidity and monitor the environmental data with an Arduino chip. We develop our procedure to grow mycelium from spores to fibrous networks. It is shown that a hydrogel substrate with soluble nutrition is more favorite for mycelium growth than a hardwood board and leads to higher growing speed. We take many microscopic images of the mycelium fibers on the hardwood board and the hydrogel substrate and found no significant difference in diameter (∼3 μm). This research provides a foundation to explore the mechanism of mycelium growth and explore the environmentally friendly and time-efficient method of its growth.
Topics: Humidity; Hydrogels; Mycelium; Nutritional Status; Temperature
PubMed: 37606082
DOI: 10.1039/d3lc00336a -
Bio Systems Jul 2023Living fungal mycelium networks are proven to have properties of memristors, capacitors and various sensors. To further progress our designs in fungal electronics we...
Living fungal mycelium networks are proven to have properties of memristors, capacitors and various sensors. To further progress our designs in fungal electronics we need to evaluate how electrical signals can be propagated through mycelium networks. We investigate the ability of mycelium-bound composites to convey electrical signals, thereby enabling the transmission of frequency-modulated information. Mycelium networks were found to reliably transfer signals with a recoverable frequency comparable to the input, in the 100Hz to 10 000Hz frequency range. Mycelial adaptive responses, such as tissue repair, may result in fragile connections, however. While the mean amplitude of output signals was not reproducible among replicate experiments exposed to the same input frequency, the variance across groups was highly consistent. Our work is supported by NARX modelling through which an approximate transfer function was derived. These findings advance the state of the art of using mycelium-bound composites in analogue electronics and unconventional computing.
Topics: Mycelium; Fungi
PubMed: 37257553
DOI: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2023.104933 -
International Journal of Medicinal... 2022Since most medicinal mushrooms are rare in nature, artificial cultivation and farming of their fruiting bodies as well as biotechnological cultivation of their fungal... (Review)
Review
Since most medicinal mushrooms are rare in nature, artificial cultivation and farming of their fruiting bodies as well as biotechnological cultivation of their fungal biomass in bioreactors on solid substrates and in liquid media has been established. This review compares the benefits and weaknesses of all three capabilities. Cultivation technologies are presented, including traditional cultivation via farming of fruiting bodies on wood logs and on sawdust-based substrates and modern biotechnological cultivation of mycelia in bioreactors by submerged and solid-state cultivation technologies. Our findings indicate that farming is cost-effective but large-scale production is time-consuming. In addition, solid-state cultivation is a comprehensive well-controlled technology that is close to the natural growth process and is suitable for veterinary use and use in food supplements. Finally, submerged liquid-state cultivation of mushroom mycelia is fast and well controlled.
Topics: Agaricales; Biomass; Bioreactors; Biotechnology; Mycelium
PubMed: 35446518
DOI: 10.1615/IntJMedMushrooms.2021042445