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Thunderbird310
Caps


Registered: 02/19/14
Posts: 187
Last seen: 4 years, 11 months
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A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms 1
#21015277 - 12/23/14 01:30 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Mostly_Harmless
wyrd bið ful aræd



Registered: 05/12/09
Posts: 5,043
Loc: Perfidious Albion
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: Thunderbird310]
#21015327 - 12/23/14 02:02 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms
By Liz Stinson
 Plastic-eating fungi doesn’t look so bad, right? Katharina Unger
According to one recent study, there’s at least 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. That’s more than 250 tons. So what to do with mountains of plastic waste with nowhere to go? Katharina Unger thinks we should eat it.
The Austrian designer partnered with Julia Kaisinger and Utrecht University to develop a system that cultivates edible plastic-digesting fungi. That’s right, you can eat mushrooms that eat plastic. In 2012, researchers at Yale University discovered a variety of mushroom (Pestalotiopsis microspora) that is capable of breaking down polyurethane. It kicked off a craze of research exploring how various forms of fungi can degrade plastic without retaining the toxicity of the material. The findings got Unger thinking: What if we could turn an environmental problem (waste) into an environmental solution (food)?
We last wrote about Unger when she was turning fly larvae into edible treats. With the Fungi Mutarium, Unger is shooting for a similar goal: recasting what might be considered an unseemly material as a new form of sustainable food production. You can think of the Fungi Mutarium as the tool to make that happen.
 Unger’s set-up for growing fungi. Katharina Unger
The tabletop set-up is a mini-factory for cultivating the mycelium (roots) of two fungi strains—Schizophyllum commune and Pleurotus ostreatus, both commonly consumed mushrooms that just so happen to have a voracious appetite for plastic. To convert the plastic into edible product, it’s first placed in an activation chamber where UV light sterilizes the material and begins the degradation process. The plastic is then placed in the growth sphere where it sits in an egg-shaped pod made from agar (a gelatinous material used to culture samples). These pods are called FUs. The diluted mycelium is added to the FUs and slowly begins to consume the plastic, growing into a fluffy, mushroom-like substance. At this point it takes a couple of months for the mycelium culture to consume biodegradable plastic, but researchers are working on accelerating the process for both biodegradable and nonbiodegradable varieties by optimizing growth conditions.
It’s a bizarre process, but the end product looks surprisingly like something you might want to consume. You could almost think of the puffy mushroom material as a bread bowl for the the agar (the jelly substance can take on whatever flavor you choose). Unger and Kaisinger came up with conceptual recipes—think a mango-carrot FU or a chocolate FU filled with yogurt—and a set of utensils to eat them with.
It’s important to note that while based in real science, Unger’s Fungi Mutarium is still somewhat speculative. Though Unger herself has eaten the fungi (“It’s quite neutral tasting,” she says), there’s still much research that needs to be done to ensure it’s totally safe for consumption. Regardless, it’s a provocative vision for this scientific research, which might otherwise stay siloed in the laboratory, out of reach of people who can give it real-world purpose. As Unger rightly puts it: “It was nice coming in as a designer and saying, this is really amazing research, but what can we actually do with it?”
 Adding the mycelium to the incubator. Katharina Unger
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You must gather your party before venturing forth.
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Lennybernadino
Amazon grower


Registered: 09/16/09
Posts: 772
Loc: Iquitos, Peru
Last seen: 26 days, 11 hours
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: Mostly_Harmless]
#21015952 - 12/23/14 08:56 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Good work! I hope there is an a more open sharing of technique about this. but the general idea of UV treating the plastic is something at least, the rest is kind of vague in applicability. Maybe plastic can be uv treated shredded and mixed into substrate, I wonder about the BE of it, how can one ensure 100% of the plastic is consumed, Or maybe when that substrate has run out make a compost from the spent substrate to be used in cultivation with plants teamed with a micorrhizal capable of degrading the remainder plastic, common lets shroomery brain/experiment storm this thing, anyone with a UV lamp and a Oyster mushroom culture can start experimenting. los what tests could figure out remainder plastic content in the spent substrate, and soil of Plant Michorrhizal team. Imagine this all that plastic could be turned into the transition between artificial fertilizer and more effective natural agriculture practices, Using Micorhizzals as a way to transform plastic into fertilizer.
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natzyshroomer
Star gazer


Registered: 12/01/12
Posts: 405
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: Lennybernadino]
#21016409 - 12/23/14 10:51 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Why even eat it at all just make it something that'll decompose faster than plastic Does already. That alone I beluve is a Huge step
-------------------- All submitted posts are by Someone Who Isn't Me and in any event are works of pure fiction or outright lies. Any information, statement, or assertion contained therein should be considered pure unadulterated bullshit
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Beanhead
IS IRONIC PARADOX


Registered: 10/11/08
Posts: 17,257
Loc: Geospatial inversion.
Last seen: 3 years, 9 months
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: natzyshroomer]
#21016506 - 12/23/14 11:15 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Eagerly awaiting DIY thread!
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404
error


Registered: 08/20/10
Posts: 14,539
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: Beanhead]
#21016907 - 12/23/14 12:32 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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i was operating under the notion that fungi consumed bits of their environment and withheld it? that plastics would end up naturally in many types of mushrooms if introduced to the environment
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winglang


Registered: 12/03/13
Posts: 3,021
Loc: Big Green Amore
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: 404]
#21017541 - 12/23/14 02:58 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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drake89
Mushroom Magnate



Registered: 06/26/11
Posts: 4,168
Loc: TN
Last seen: 5 years, 2 months
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: winglang] 1
#21018256 - 12/23/14 05:53 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Yall are all high and this article is misleading. They are using bio plastics, and even with pre treating with light and chemicals, are getting less than 10% degradation.
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natzyshroomer
Star gazer


Registered: 12/01/12
Posts: 405
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: drake89]
#21018559 - 12/23/14 07:05 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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http://aem.asm.org/content/77/17/6076.full Bioremediation is an important approach to waste reduction that relies on biological processes to break down a variety of pollutants. This is made possible by the vast metabolic diversity of the microbial world. To explore this diversity for the breakdown of plastic, we screened several dozen endophytic fungi for their ability to degrade the synthetic polymer polyester polyurethane (PUR). Several organisms demonstrated the ability to efficiently degrade PUR in both solid and liquid suspensions. Particularly robust activity was observed among several isolates in the genus Pestalotiopsis, although it was not a universal feature of this genus. Two Pestalotiopsis microspora isolates were uniquely able to grow on PUR as the sole carbon source under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Molecular characterization of this activity suggests that a serine hydrolase is responsible for degradation of PUR. The broad distribution of activity observed and the unprecedented case of anaerobic growth using PUR as the sole carbon source suggest that endophytes are a promising source of biodiversity from which to screen for metabolic properties useful for bioremediation.
-------------------- All submitted posts are by Someone Who Isn't Me and in any event are works of pure fiction or outright lies. Any information, statement, or assertion contained therein should be considered pure unadulterated bullshit
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rubberlizard
Brewer and hobbymycologist


Registered: 10/26/10
Posts: 388
Loc: Probably my brewery
Last seen: 2 years, 10 months
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: natzyshroomer]
#21020126 - 12/24/14 05:33 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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marked for later reading
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Mykes logos
homo nosce te ipsum


Registered: 08/05/12
Posts: 1,108
Loc: FL
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: rubberlizard]
#21020459 - 12/24/14 08:48 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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eh, I'm skeptical. Looks really cool though and seems like a great idea- what a cool concept to come up with (and share)!
and lol every paper involving plastic degradation cites the pacific plastic patch... grabs the reader's attention and gives it a real purpose. Without the pacific garbage patch, noone would fund these proposals 
like the other 2042452043 papers about plastic degradation (of some sort) that have come out over the last decade, this is also just a "petri dish in the lab" kinda thing...
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Grey
⇜ ✯ ⇝



Registered: 11/06/14
Posts: 6,223
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Re: A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms [Re: Mykes logos]
#21032055 - 12/27/14 02:30 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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There's a video on YouTube I watched by the"radical mycology" guy where he put unused cigarette filters (some plastic cellulose kind?) In a culture slant of oyster mycelium. One it was accustomed to growing in/on the clean filters, he added used filters and the mycelium colonized those.
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AMU Q&A If you don't have a plan of your own, you'll become a part of somebody else's.
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