Fungus 01 - natural antibiotics

7.4.2019: Natural antibiotics from fungi against bacteria - AND may be also against viruses:
A wide, so far little explored field! The unexpected magic of mushrooms - even mushrooms as a source of antibiotics!
https://netzfrauen.org/2019/04/07/mushrooms/

-- Fungus records: Canadian researcher find 2 giant fungus Armillaria gallica (honey mushroom) in Crystal Falls (Michigan, "USA") and in Oregon ("USA")
-- Antibiotics are produced with substances from fungi
-- Penicillin is produced from household mold growing on old bread
-- Substances from fungi are healing flu, polio, mumps, measles and glandular fever, also "incurable diseases" like HIV and the Zika virus: Armillaria gallica
-- Substances from fungi eat up plastic: Aspergillus tubingensis
-- Substances from fungi for building materials, mushroom bricks, intelligent concrete that repairs cracks itself, alternative wood etc.: Trametes versicolor

The article:

Normally fungi are associated with rot and decay. They can also be a disregarded resource that helps humanity solve some of its biggest problems. Mrs. Stella McCartney, for example, is among the designers who now want to work with mushroom leather. Or, the fungus called "Armillaria gallica" could offer a potential counterweight to cancer's notorious instability. And even mushroom packaging exists. It's biodegradable and is already being used by companies like Dell to package their computers. Researchers at Yale found that there is a rare fungus that likes to eat plastic (link). And there are even already solutions for bee mortality (link), and there are special fungi for this too (link). You will be surprised. Learn here the unexpected magic of mushrooms.

[Fungus records: Armillaria Gallica (honey mushroom) in Michigan and in Oregon]
The unexpected magic of fungi

We had already introduced you Mr. Paul Stamets (link). He holds several patents on natural insecticides made from mushrooms. Mushrooms belong to the future, says Paul, and he show us this following article, which we have translated for you.

They are usually associated with rotting and decay: fungi. But they could also be a disregarded resource that helps mankind to solve some of their biggest problems.

Mr. Jim Anderson is standing on a monster. It is living since a long time already, when king Xerxes was organizning wars against the ancient Greeks, and the weight of this monster is more than three blue whales together. The monster's appitite is never finishing and it's growing passing the giant forest lines. But this is not a lost animal of Greek mythology, but this is a fungus.

Mr. Anderson is standing next to a modest piece of forest land in Crystal Falls, in Michigan on the Upper Pensinsula. He is visiting an organism whic his living in the forest's floor and which was detected by him and his friends almost 30 years ago. This is the home of "Armillaria gallica", a kind of honey mushroom.

Anderson stands in a modest piece of forest land in Crystal Falls, on Michigans Upper Peninsula. He pays a visit to an organism that lives in the forest floor and which he and his colleagues discovered almost 30 years ago. This is the home of Armillaria Gallica, a kind of honey mushroom.

These ordinary fungi occur in moderate forest areas throughout Asia, North America and Europe, where they grow on dying or dead wood, and the fungus is acceleratig the rotting process. The only visible signs of it are often lumps of scaly yellow-brown poisonous mushroom-like fruit bodies that are up to 10 cm in size.

When Anderson and his colleagues came to Crystal Falls at the end of the 1980s, they found that the previously suspected rich accumulation of Armillaria Gallica under the mulch of leaves and the top layer of the forest was actually a single gigantic specimen. They suspected that the mushroom expanded over around 0.37 km2, had 100 tons of weight and was at least 1,500 years old. It became the latest record holder for the largest organism on our planet. A copy of the same kind can be found in a forest of Oregon which keeps the current record.

"At that time, this caused some surprise," says Anderson. “Our article was released on April 1, and some considered the news an April fool's joke. In 2015 we wanted to see it again [the mushroom] for controlling our prediction that this organism was really independent and permanent ”.

Between 2015 and 2017, they returned to it several times, removed samples from distant points in the forest and let their DNA run through a sequencer of their laboratory at the University of Toronto. The genetic analysis has developed significantly since her first study in the 1980s. New techniques accelerate the process, reduce costs and offer more information.

The new probes showed that the Armillaria Gallica, which they had identified as an independent being, was much larger and older than predicted, four times as large and another 1000 years older and with about 400 tons of weight (link).

The analysis showed another, more amazing recognition, one that could support us humans in our struggle against one of the greatest enemies of modern medicine - cancer.

The Canadian researchers discovered the possible secret behind Armillaria Gallica's extraordinary dimension and age. It comes to light that the fungus has an extremely low mutation rate - which means that it avoids possible harmful changes in its genetic code.

When organisms grow, every cell is parting into two for producing daughter cells. By the time, DNA in the cells can be damaged provoking mistakes which is known as mutations which are introduced into the genetic code. This is considered one of the key mechanisms for aging.

But it seems that the fungus "Armillaria Gallica" in Crystal Fall could have a certain automatic resistence against this DNA damage. 15 probes from parts far away in the forest which were controlled by the team in sequences had only 163 letters changed from 100 millions in the genetic code of "Armilaria gallica".

"The frequency of mutation is much, much lower than we could ever have imagined," says Mr. Anderson. “In order to achieve this low level of mutation, we expect the cells to share on average once per meter. But the amazing thing is that the cells are microscopically small - only a few micrometers in size - so that millions of them would be needed in every meter. ”

Anderson and his team believe that the mushroom has a mechanism that helps to protect his DNA from damage by giving it to one of the most stable genomes in the natural world. Although you still have to deal with this, the remarkable stability of the genome of the Armillaria Gallica could provide new knowledge of human health.

In some types of cancer, mutations in cells can "riot" (link) because the normal repair mechanisms of the cells controlling the DNA are not working any more.

"Armillaria Gallica could offer a potential counterweight to the notorious instability of cancer," says Anderson. “If you see a line of cancer cells that are equivalent in old age, they would be full of mutations, so they are not reckognizable possibly. Armillaria is the other extreme. It could be possible to recognize the evolutionary changings which makes possible to be [like the cell is] comparing it with cancer cells."

it would be so sifted by mutations that you may not be able to recognize it. Armillaria is the opposite extreme. It could be possible to recognize the evolutionary changes that made it possible for her to be [as she is] and to compare them with cancer cells. "

This could not only enable scientists to learn more about what is going wrong in cancer cells, but also open up new opportunities for cancer treatment.

While Anderson and his colleagues do not plan to do this work themselves - they leave them to others who are younger and more qualified to understand the genetic complexity of cancer - their results offer a fascinating insight into the unused power of fungi which could help mankind.

Fungi are among the most common organisms on our planet - the combined biomass of these often tiny organisms exceeds all animals on the planet (link). And we constantly discover new mushrooms. More than 90% of the estimated 3.8 million fungi in the world are currently [still] unknown to science. In 2017 alone, 2,189 new fungi types were described by scientists (link).

A recently published report by the British Royal Botanic Kew Gardens in London emphasizes that mushrooms are already used in hundreds of different types, from paper production to cleaning our dirty dresses (link).

[The pharmaceutical antibiotics are made of substances of fungi]
Fungi as a source of antibiotics

Around 15% of all vaccines and biologically produced medication come from fungi. The complex proteins, for example, triggered an immune response to the hepatitis B virus, grow in yeast cells that belong to the mushroom family.

Perhaps the best known is the antibiotic penicillin, which was discovered in a frequent type of household mold that often grows on old bread. Dozens of other types of antibiotics are now produced by mushrooms.

They also offer numerous treatments of migraines and statins for the treatment of heart disease. A relatively new immunosuppressant for the treatment of multiple sclerosis was developed from a connection that is produced by a mushroom, which itself was infecting cicada larvae.

"It is part of this family of fungi that penetrate insects and eat them," says Mr. Tom Prescott, a researcher who evaluates the use of plants and mushrooms in the Royal Botanic Kew Gardens [in London]. "They produce these compounds to suppress the insects's immune system, and it turns out that they can also be used in humans."

[Substances from fungi are healing many diseases]
Some researchers, however, are reporting that so far we have only scratched the surface of what fungi can offer us.

"It has already been reported that [fungi] become active against viral diseases," says Riikka Linnakoski (link), a forest pathologist at the Natural Resources Institute, Finland.

Compounds produced by fungi can destroy viruses that cause diseases such as influenza, polio, mumps, measles and glandular fever. Numerous fungi have also been found to produce compounds that could treat diseases that currently have no cure, such as HIV and the Zika virus (link).

"I think these represent only a small fraction of the total arsenal of bioactive compounds," Linnakoski says. "Fungi are a huge source of different bioactive molecules that could potentially be used as antiviral agents in the future."

She is a member of a research team investigating whether fungi growing in Colombia's mangrove forests could be sources of new antiviral agents. However, those goals have not yet been reached. Fungi as a source of antibiotics that work against bacteria have been well studied, but fungi antibiotics against viruses are not approved yet.

Linnakoski has two ideas why science has no research performed with fungi antibiotics against viruses, first they did not cultivate fungi and recollecting them, and second there is no communication between mycologists and virologists. But she believes it will only be a matter of time before a fungus-based antiviral drug finds its way into the clinic.

Linnakoski also believes that new classes of fungi can be found in inhospitable environments, for example on the sea floor in the deepest parts of the oceans, or in the mangrove forests where the conditions are special, so it would be possible to find new interesting compounds.

"It can be assumed that the extreme conditions encourage fungi to produce unique and structurally unique secondary metabolic products," she says. "Unfortunately, many of the native ecosystems are disappearing in alarming speed, which are hosts for a great potential for the discovery of new bioactive connections, such as mangrove forests, in alarming speed." [...]

[Fungi eat plastic]

In addition, mushrooms have uses that can solve other problems – beyond our health.

A fungus found in the ground at a landfill on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, may be a solution to the alarming amount of plastic pollution clogging our oceans. Fariha Hasan, a microbiologist at Quaid-I-Azam University in Islamabad, found that the fungus Aspergillus tubingensis can quickly degrade polyurethane plastic.

A fungus found in the ground at a landfill on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, may be a solution to the alarming amount of plastic pollution clogging our oceans. Fariha Hasan, a microbiologist at Quaid-I-Azam University in Islamabad, found that the fungus Aspergillus tubingensis can quickly degrade polyurethane plastic (link ENGL).

These plastics, which used to be used to make a wide range of products such as furniture foams, electronics housings, adhesives and films, can remain in soil and seawater for years. However, it has been found that the fungi break them down within a few weeks. Hasan and her team are now investigating how the fungi can be used for the large-scale mining of plastic waste. Other fungi such as Pestalotiopsis microspore, which usually grows on rotting ivy leaves, have also been found to have a tremendous appetite for plastic (link ENGL), raising hopes that they could be used to solve our growing waste problem.

In fact, mushrooms have a significant flavor for the pollution we burden our world with. Species have been discovered that can clean soils of oil spills, break down harmful heavy metals, destroy long-lived pesticides (link ENGL), and even help rehabilitate more radioactively contaminated sites (link ENGL).

However, mushrooms could also primarily contribute to the fact that some plastics no longer have to be used at all.

A number of groups around the world are now trying to use an essential feature of fungi – the vein-like webs of mycelium they produce – to create materials that can replace plastic packaging. As fungi grow, these mycelium threads branch outward to probe into nooks and crannies in the soil, thus connecting it. They are nature's glue.

In 2010, Ecovative Design began to investigate how they could use it to combine natural waste products such as rice husks or wood chips into an alternative to polystyrene packaging. Her early work has evolved into MycoComposite, which uses leftovers from hemp plants as a feedstock.

These are packaged together with fungal spores and flour in reusable molds, in which they then grow for nine days. In the process, they produce enzymes that begin to digest the waste. Once the material has been shaped into the desired shape, it is heat treated to dry the material and stop further growth.

The resulting "mushroom packaging" (link ENGL) is biodegradable and is already being used by companies such as Dell to package their computers.

The company has also developed a method to grow mycelium in foam form that can be used in athletic shoes or as insulation. They can also produce leather-like substances from mycelium. In collaboration with the sustainable textile company Bolt Threats, it combines corn stalks with the mycelium (link ENGL) and lets both grow into a mat that is tanned and compressed. The entire process takes days and not the years it takes for animal leather.

Stella McCartney is one of the designers who now want to work with this mushroom leather. Shoe designer Liz Ciokajlo recently used a mycelium for a modern recreation of the Moon Boot fashion trend from the 70s (link ENGL).

Athanassia Athanassiou, a materials scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, uses fungi to develop new types of bandages to treat poorly healing or open wounds (link ENGL).

But she has also discovered that it is possible to optimize the properties of the mycelium material by changing what it needs to digest. The harder a substance to be digested is for the fungi – such as wood chips instead of potato peels – the stiffer the resulting mycelium material (link ENGL).

Gesehen in Australien – Doro Schreier

It opens up the prospect of using mushrooms for more robust purposes.

[Architecture: mushrooms + wood = concrete - mushrooms + rice husks + waste glass = mushroom bricks]

The Californian company MycoWorks has developed methods to process mushrooms into building materials (video ENGL). By fusing wood with mycelium, they were able to produce bricks that are fire-retardant and more resistant than traditional concrete (video ENGL).

Tien Huynh, a bioengineer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, is leading a project to make similar mushroom bricks, combining mycelium from Trametes versicolor with rice husks and crushed waste glass.

She says that not only do they provide a cheap and environmentally friendly building material, but they also help solve another problem that many households in Australia and around the world face – termites. The silica content of the rice and glass makes the material less appetizing for termites, which cause billions of dollars in damage to homes each year.

[Fungi produce chitin for food+cosmetics - the mushroom chitin]

"In our research, we have also used the fungi to produce enzymes and new biostructures for various properties such as sound absorption, strength and flexibility," says Huynh. Her team is also working on using fungi to make chitin (link ENGL) – a substance used to thicken food and in many cosmetics.

"Usually, chitin is derived from shellfish, which have hypoallergenic properties," she says. "The mushroom chitin doesn't. We'll have more mushroom-based products later this year, but it's certainly a fascinating resource that's largely untapped [at this time]."

[Architecture: Fungi as a factor against cracks in concrete - for "intelligent concrete"]

Fungi can also be combined with traditional building materials to create a "smart concrete" that can heal itself as the fungi grow into emerging cracks and secrete fresh calcium carbonate, the most important raw material in concrete, to repair the damage (link ENGL).

[Architecture: mushrooms+hay waste=timber]

"The possible uses for mycelium [...] are endless," says Gitartha Kalita, a bioengineer at Assam Engineering College and Assam Don Bosco University in Guwahati, India. He and his colleagues use mushrooms and hay waste to create an alternative to lumber. "Everything we call agricultural waste today is actually an incredible resource on which mushrooms can grow. We have already damaged our environment. In this way, we can replace the current materials with something that will be sustainably preserved. They [the mushrooms] can turn our waste into something that is really valuable to us."

Title photo – G0DG67 Bulbous Honey Fungus is an edible mushroom. Image shot 06/2015. Exact date unknown.>