The importance of fungi and of mycology for a global development of the bioeconomy

Abstract

The vision of the European common research programme for 2014-2020, called Horizon 2020, is to create a smarter, more sustainable and more inclusive society. However, this is a global endeavor, which is important for mycologists all over the world because it includes a special role for fungi and fungal products. After ten years of research on industrial scale conversion of biowaste, the conclusion is that the most efficient and gentle way of converting recalcitrant lignocellulosic materials into high value products for industrial purposes, is through the use of fungal enzymes. Moreover, fungi and fungal products are also instrumental in producing fermented foods, to give storage stability and improved health. Climate change will lead to increasingly severe stress on agricultural production and productivity, and here the solution may very well be that fungi will be brought into use as a new generation of agricultural inoculants to provide more robust, more nutrient efficient, and more drought tolerant crop plants. However, much more knowledge is required in order to be able to fully exploit the potentials of fungi, to deliver what is needed and to address the major global challenges through new biological processes, products, and solutions. This knowledge can be obtained by studying the fungal proteome and metabolome; the biology of fungal RNA and epigenetics; protein expression, homologous as well as heterologous; fungal host/substrate relations; physiology, especially of extremophiles; and, not the least, the extent of global fungal biodiversity. We also need much more knowledge and understanding of how fungi degrade biomass in nature.The projects in our group in Aalborg University are examples of the basic and applied research going on to increase the understanding of the biology of the fungal secretome and to discover new enzymes and new molecular/bioinformatics tools.However, we need to put Mycology higher up on global agendas, e.g. by positioning Mycology as a candidate for an OECD Excellency Program. This could pave the way for increased funding of international collaboration, increased global visibility, and higher priority among decision makers all over the world.

Keywords: biodiversity; biomass conversion; fungal enzymes; global challenges; new biological solutions; secretomics; teaching; training.

Fig. 1.

The Biomass Value Pyramid shows the entire cascade of value adding products which can be produced from agricultural crop residues and other left over bio materials. The lowest value is achieved by burning the biomass and converting it into heat and electricity. Higher value products can be achieved by converting the biomass through treatment with fungal enzymes!

Fig. 2.

The Peptide Pattern Recognition, (PPR), generated GH13 protein subfamilies which predicted the enzyme function correctly with 78–100 % accuracy; except for one enzyme class (3.2.1.133) where for so far unknown reasons the PPR subgrouping did not match the function annotations found in the CAZy database.

Fig. 3.

When grown in swine wastewater, some duckweed species such as the Spirodela polyrhizza contains up to 40 % protein, which makes it a valuable animal feed source. Picture by courtesy of Armando Asuncion Salmean.

Fig. 4.

Leaf-cutter ant colony established in the laboratory of JJ Boomsma (University of Copenhagen). The ants have built three fungal gardens under plastic beakers. The beaker has been removed from the garden to the upper right. The gradient of biomass decomposition, from top to bottom, is indicated by the green arrow. The dark material on the surface of the garden is newly incorporated leaf fragments. Non-degraded material is removed by the ants from the bottom of the garden and placed in the refuse dump (upright beaker to the lower right) (photo, Morten N. Grell).