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Enabling Community-Based Metrology for Wood-Degrading Fungi

Summary

This research establishes standard methods for measuring and comparing the growth of wood-degrading fungi across different laboratories using widely available materials like Pringles™ chips. This work is important for developing reliable ways to use fungi in manufacturing various products. Impacts on everyday life: – Enables more reliable production of mushroom-based materials for packaging, textiles, and building materials – Makes it easier for small-scale producers to work with fungi using accessible materials – Helps advance sustainable manufacturing using renewable resources like wood waste – Supports development of standardized fungal-based products for consumers – Could lead to more localized, environmentally-friendly manufacturing

Background

Lignocellulosic biomass could support a greatly-expanded bioeconomy. Current strategies for using biomass typically rely on single-cell organisms and extensive ancillary equipment to produce precursors for downstream manufacturing processes. Alternative forms of bioproduction based on solid-state fermentation and wood-degrading fungi could enable more direct means of manufacture. However, basic methods for cultivating wood-degrading fungi are often ad hoc and not readily reproducible.

Objective

To develop standard reference strains, substrates, measurements, and methods sufficient to begin to enable reliable reuse of mycological materials and products in simple laboratory settings.

Results

Growth performance of fungi on media made from Pringles™ correlated well with performance on the NIST reference material (R2=0.93). Measurements of growth rates on locally-sourced versus centrally-provided Pringles™ substrates were well correlated (R2=0.90) across participating laboratories. The researchers developed a Relative Extension Unit (REU) framework that reduced variation in reported measurements by up to 75%.

Conclusion

The community-based measurement methods enable practitioners to coordinate the reuse of standard materials, methods, strains, and share information supporting work with wood-degrading fungi. The approach helps support reproducible science and development of more reliable fabrication processes. Widely-available reusable materials and methods could help advance mycological production as a distributed manufacturing platform.
  • Published in:Fungal Biology and Biotechnology,
  • Study Type:Laboratory Methods Development,
  • Source: 10.1186/s40694-020-00092-2
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