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December 26, 2022 - January 29, 2023
The earliest records of mushroom cultivation date from around 2,000 years ago in China.
The fungus uses radical chemistry to decompose the wood. The termites consume the compost that remains. To house the fungus, Macrotermes build towering mounds that reach heights of nine metres, some of which are more than 2,000 years old. Societies of Macrotermes termites, like those of leafcutter ants, are some of the most complex formed by any insect group.
Macrotermes had been cultivating fungi for over 20 million years by the time the genus Homo evolved. And indeed, when it comes to Termitomyces fungi, termites’ cultivation techniques far outstrip those of humans. Termitomyces mushrooms are a delicacy (and can grow to a metre across, making them some of the largest mushrooms in the world).
In some, Macrotermes are portrayed as messengers between humans and gods. In others, it was only with the help of a termite assistant that God was able to create the universe in the first place.
A material made from the outer layers of portabello mushrooms shows promise in replacing graphite in lithium batteries.
Whereas McCoy and Stamets tempt fungi into new metabolic behaviours, Bayer tempts them into new growth forms.
Just as different fungal strains vary in their willingness to break down toxic nerve agents or glyphosate, different strains vary in how fast they grow, and what sort of material their mycelium will make.
He and his team had shown that extracts of certain white rot fungi could be used to reduce bee mortality dramatically.
The most insidious problem, however, is the varroa mite, appropriately named Varroa destructor. Varroa mites are parasites that suck fluid from bees’ bodies and are vectors for a range of deadly viruses.
Wood-rotting fungi are a rich source of antiviral compounds, many of which have long been used as medicines, particularly in China.
Exactly when humans first started to
In the preparation of either, humans feed yeast before they feed themselves.
my wardrobe filled up with bottles.6
Bolt Threads, a company working with Ecovative to produce mycelial leather, has genetically engineered yeasts to produce spider silk.
One team is working on ‘Sc2.0’, a human-designed synthetic yeast built from the bottom up – an artificial life form that engineers will be able to program to produce any number of compounds. In
They reminded me that it matters what stories we use to make sense of the world.
Advances in gene sequencing make it possible to order fungi into groups that share an evolutionary history, rather than groups based on physical traits.
Within the mycelium of a single fungal ‘individual’ there can exist multiple genomes. Within the DNA extracted from a single pinch of dust, there might be tens of thousands of unique genetic signatures, but no way to assign them to known fungal groups.
the concept of symbiosis behaves like a prism through which our own social values are often dispersed.
The dominant narrative in the United States and western Europe since the development of evolutionary theory in the late nineteenth century was one of conflict and competition, and it mirrored views of social progress within an industrial capitalist system.
If we understand organisms to be machines, we’ll be more likely to treat them as such.
Similarly, plants and mycorrhizal fungi are no longer thought of as behaving either mutualistically or parasitically.
Shared mycorrhizal networks can facilitate co-operation and also competition. Nutrients can move through the soil via fungal connections, but so can poisons.
Why would the ability to metabolise alcohol arise so many millions of years before humans developed technologies of fermentation?
In this view, humans are tempted by alcohol because our primate ancestors
Both our human attraction to alcohol, and the entire ecology of gods and goddesses that oversee fermentation and intoxication, are remnants of a much more ancient fascination.
Malaysian treeshrews – small mammals with feathery tails – climb into the flower buds of the bertam palm and drink fermented nectar in quantities that, scaled to body weight, would intoxicate a human. The plume of alcoholic vapours produced by yeasts attracts the treeshrews to the palm flowers. Bertam palms depend on treeshrews to pollinate them, and their flower buds have evolved into specialised fermentation vessels – structures that harbour communities of yeast and encourage such rapid fermentation that their nectar froths and bubbles.
