Leveraging the genetic variation of Schizophyllum commune for fungi-first material design

Abstract

In the face of humanity’s overconsumption of Earth’s dwindling resources, materials scientists have started exploring new frontiers that better fit the needs of tomorrow. Like biologists, they have come to see how the diverse and adaptable fungi could help guide them to new solutions for their most pressing challenges. This interest has blossomed into a fungineering movement that aims to exploit the functional application of fungal mycelium for textiles, foams, coatings, mycoremediation, and many more. Based alone on mycelium’s inherent strong and robust chitin-glucan structure, these pure mycelial materials are on the precipice of feasibility, but it is a question of how they are optimized before they reach the next level. Past efforts have taken a reinforcement or transformation approach where the mycelia are strengthened in any way to reach a performance target whether it may be plasticizing, heat-treating, dehydrating, tanning, or binding. Our goal was to take a new, fungi-first approach by optimizing our materials on the grounds of genetics by identifying ideal genotypes that offer the best material properties. With the multifarious genetics of Schizophyllum commune, we were able to evaluate how unique mitochondrial and nuclear haplotypes interfaced with two disparate crosslinking treatments of glycerol and PEG-400. Though the effects of the crosslinkers were highly significant, the mechanical and physiochemical characterization of our thirty two unique films highlighted consistent interactions between phenotypic microstructures and their mechanisms of crosslinking. The diverse set of material properties across sixteen strains of S. commune suggests that genetics plays just as an important role as processing in the fabrication of mycelial materials, and could offer the opportunity to bring them to much greater heights.