The importance of fungi and mycology for addressing major global challenges*

Abstract

In the new bioeconomy, fungi play a very important role in addressing major global challenges, being instrumental for improved resource efficiency, making renewable substitutes for products from fossil resources, upgrading waste streams to valuable food and feed ingredients, counteracting life-style diseases and antibiotic resistance through strengthening the gut biota, making crop plants more robust to survive climate change conditions, and functioning as host organisms for production of new biological drugs. This range of new uses of fungi all stand on the shoulders of the efforts of mycologists over generations: the scientific discipline mycology has built comprehensive understanding within fungal biodiversity, classification, evolution, genetics, physiology, ecology, pathogenesis, and nutrition. Applied mycology could not make progress without this platform. To unfold the full potentials of what fungi can do for both environment and man we need to strengthen the field of mycology on a global scale. The current mission statement gives an overview of where we are, what needs to be done, what obstacles to overcome, and which potentials are within reach. It further provides a vision for how mycology can be strengthened: The time is right to make the world aware of the immense importance of fungi and mycology for sustainable global development, where land, water and biological materials are used in a more efficient and more sustainable manner. This is an opportunity for profiling mycology by narrating the role played by fungi in the bioeconomy. Greater awareness and appreciation of the role of fungi can be used to build support for mycology around the world. Support will attract more talent to our field of study, empower mycologists around the world to generate more funds for necessary basic research, and strengthen the global mycology network. The use of fungi for unlocking the full potentials of the bioeconomy relies on such progress. The fungal kingdom can be an inspiration for even more.

Keywords: bioeconomy; funding opportunities; fungal products; fungal research; global solutions; resource efficiency.

Fig. 1.

The value pyramid of biomass conversion: At the bottom, with lowest value, is the bulk use of biomass for combustion, making heat and electricity. Next layer is using biomass for biofuel, a much needed renewable alternative to fossil transport fuel. Further up the biomass value pyramid, is production of specialized and higher value products (materials, chemicals, feed, food and pharma). Such products are not only substituting for fossils but also making use of the complex structures of new biomass, making products not possible to make from fossilized biomass. All uses except for burning, gasification, etc., of the biomass involve use of microbial (primarily fungal) conversion and upgrade. Courtesy of Peter Westermann.

Fig. 2.

Learning from Nature′s “green biorefinery”: Leaf cutter ants carry pieces of green leaves to the fungus garden (upper), feeding the fungal symbiont, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, farmed in the fungal garden in the subterranean ant nest (lower; laboratory culture of Jacobus Boomsma). The fungus produces swollen tipped cells, filled with proteins and sugars, the gongylidia, organized in staphylae. The gongylidia are picked by the ants for feeding the ant colony with protein and sugar rich feed. Bottom line is that this successful and complex society, where fungal enzymes convert green leaves into accessible, highly nutritious fungal biomass provide basis for one of the most successful life forms on earth. Photo: Henrik H. De Fine Licht.

Fig. 3.

The hemicellulose plant cell wall polymer, arabinoxylan, is degraded by many different and highly specialized fungal enzymes in nature: 1. endoxylanases; 2. α-L-arabinofuranosidases; 3. glucuronidases; 4. ferulic acid esterases; and 5. acetyl xylan esterases. Ongoing research aims to use such specific fungal enzymes to modify the arabinoxylan, a sub stream from lignocellulose biorefinery, into C₅ sugar oligosaccharides with a prebiotic effect, stimulating the healthy gut fungal and microbial populations of humans and other animals. Modified from Chavez et al. (2006).

Fig. 4.

Learning from nature: the specialized basidiomycete Termitomyces titanicus (Agaricales) grows in subterranean termite nests. It can grow to form massive and impressive basidiomes, used as a human delicacy (above). The benefit to the termites – even without having developed the sophisticated farming procedure - is accessibility to protein rich feed. The percentages of protein in edible basidiomycetous fungi are high (measured as % of total dry weight; (below); an extraordinarily high protein content has been recorded for Termitomyces species. In future we will be able to make biorefineries by growing fungi on household waste and use the protein rich fungal biomass for animal feed. Photo and table: Duur Aanen.

Fig. 5.

Onygena species. Non-pathogenic species of Onygenales, are specialized in breaking down the keratin found in feather, hooves, and horn. The keratin is composed of proteins, bound in a non-bio-accessible form. Among the large number of different proteases produced by O. corvina, we discovered that just three enzymes, belonging to two types of protease families, are sufficientto breakdown both feather and pig bristles. The picture shows O.equina growing on horn, but not on the skull (Northern Ireland, 2012). Photo: Jens H. Petersen.