MycelioTronics: Fungal mycelium skin for sustainable electronics | Hacker News Reader

MycelioTronics: Fungal mycelium skin for sustainable electronics

science.org

113 pointslioeters24 comments

The fungus they use, Ganoderma lucidum, is reishi.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92757/

Nice. Reishi is a really cool mushroom. I was already planning to try cultivating some soon.

Not affiliated with this researcher.

Have Been working on similar commercial applications, manufacturing with of this tech for 4 years (can show my own research, date stamped by google, github, etc.)

Anybody interested in actually manufacturing might want to hit me up. Patents ready.

Http://fungible.farm

Very interesting stuff. I've been looking at and experimenting with similar ideas for a bit. Nothing professionally, but I'm excited to find more active work to follow gluing together manufacturing with fungus. Excited to poke at your github and have some things I'd very much like to talk to you about in the new year. I'll shoot you an email this week.

After watching a lot of Paul Stamets on Rogan I am, I think permanently, very fascinated with mycology.

It's something I never paid much attention to, but the way they work, grow, how they're connected, the potential applications, is all super cool.

Yeah considering it's still kind of the early days for these sort of "applied" mycology projects, and there are already so many novel ideas and incredible capabilities being shown, I wonder what the real life application's will look like 50 years from now.

Absolutely love the science being done here! Hope things like these can hit the market, and quickly.

It'd be neat to build a device that can interface with the electrochemical signal layer of mycellium networks in an attempt to understand the nature of their awareness, if it can be called such. I suppose the best way to further our understanding of them is through experi(m)ential methods. It's worked well for the natural sciences so far shrug

I'm going to hang my comment off yours, since it's nearly a perfect "hook".

You don't need to build that device.

You are that device.

(Check out Michael Levin's lab's work, et. al. The machinery of thought is common to all cells, not just neurons. Mycelium is a brain.

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The problem with this approach (making machines out of living tissues) is the fundamental difference between what Martin Buber called "I-Thou" vs. "I-It" relationship.

Mushrooms are people. Treating them as objects is rude at best.

I agree. Establishing communication and seeking understanding them are nice approaches.

I like what his guy has started doing recently in his parent's basement https://fungimancy.neocities.org/ but am a bit put off by his 'life-form as tool' approach.

I'd be very careful with anything fungal on my body. Last thing I'd want is a fungal infection in my lungs or something dreadful like that. This looks like the classic human folly were we get blinded and overhyped by the usefulness of the technology and minimize and discard the side-effects.

The abstract doesn't mention anything about grafting this to human skin.

I believe the researchers are proposing a fungal substrate for PCBs.

People eat it.

The earth is absolutely covered in fungus and fungus spores. I don't think a product manufactured from stabilized reishi mycelium would be anything to worry about.

That's the premise of the game The Last Of Us.

Which is a work of fiction

And is based on cordyceps mushrooms. Which are actual parasitoids of insects. They're the famous "mind-control" mushrooms you see in every nature documentary that features ants in the Amazon

Reishi on the other hand... eats trees.

For some possibly useful context. When wood (lignan) first evolved there was nothing that could break it down. And for possibly thousands of years much of earth became "polluted" by dead trees that couldn't be broken. It was fungi that finally evolved ways to decompose it. They're obviously really good at it at this point, but hopefully that gives you a sense of just how specialized an organism has to be to primarily live off of wood

You got nothing to worry about :)

Cordyceps are fairly harmless, actually very beneficial to humans.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7356751/

Mycelial sheets are formed of filaments (hyphae) that have grown as a result of a spore / multiple spores growing, which are 'fruit phase' of the fungus.

The mycelial sheets are rendered 'inert' through one of an option of processes (for example baking it).

A clearer visualisation of the materials here: the mycelial sheets used in research / production are as to spores as a plank of apple tree wood is to apple seeds.

When you're working with the wood you do need to be cautious of the dust, but you don't need to be concerned about apple seeds sporadically appearing.

Fungi are a critical component of all soil, spores are everywhere indoors and out.

The use of “skin” in the title has nothing to do with the human body. This is creating a substrate to replace the “green boards” we use now. It’s composed of layers of “mushroom skin” to place traces and components on.

I'd watch out for bacteria too! Wouldn't want any of those crawling around your gut.

You are breathing in fungal spores right now. They're everywhere.

Well that’s beer and bread off then menu.

Fungi are like plants. Some are beneficial. Some are not.

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