真菌学教学课件：chapter 8 Mycopesticides.pptxVIP

I trained them in tissue culture of mycelium, showing them how I introduced to a nonnutritive agar media a sample of my preferred wood substrate upon which I wanted mushrooms to eventually form. The idea was to familiarize mushrooms strains to a nonnative wood substrate so that the mushroom mycelium could adapt its enzymatic pathways early in its life cycle. This is one of the ways I have selected mycelial strains for growing shiitake or maitake mushrooms on alder, a wood that they don’t inhabit in nature.Some strains adapted; some didn’t.I selected those that grew faster, sending out diverging fans of running mycelium. We expanded this model, using toxins instead of wood as added nutrients in the agar media. I provided Battelle a select library of 26 of my most aggressive mushroom strains for testing as antidotes to bacteria, petrochemicals, and other toxins. We further refined this model, incrementally increasing concentrations of various toxins used in chemical weapons and decreasing other natural nutrients until the starving mycelia digested toxins as food. After a series of dilutions wherein the carbon source was incrementally replaced by the selected surrogate neurotoxins, we found, that some of my strains adapted and grew when the toxins became the sole source of nutrition! By capitalizing on the enzymatic versatility and learning ability of fungus in this way, we were able to customize strains so that they neutralized toxic weapons and wastes. This joint study by Battelle and Fungi Perfecti suggests that remediation of sites polluted by chemical warfare agents using mushroom mycelium is more effective and less expensive than conventional methods. In one of many tests, 2 of my strains neutralized “very close surrogates of chemical weapons such as sarin, soman, and the VX family of compounds” Mushroom mycelia secrete peculiar enzymes, such as quinone reductases from thebrown rot Gloeophyllum trabeum, powerful enough to consume many wood preservatives, orm