(Photo by Pixabay via Pexels)
By Stephen Beech
New living fungus-based building material repairs itself for over a month, say scientists.
The substance that uses the root-like mycelium of a fungus and bacteria cells was developed by American engineers.
Their results, published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, show that the material - which is manufactured with living cells at low temperatures - is capable of self-repairing.
And it could eventually offer a "sustainable alternative" for high-emission building materials such as concrete, according to the research team.
Study corresponding author Doctor Chelsea Heveran, an Assistant Professor at Montana State University, said: “Biomineralised materials do not have high enough strength to replace concrete in all applications, but we and others are working to improve their properties so they can see greater usage.2
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Compared to other similar biomaterials, which are normally only usable for a few days or weeks, Dr. Heveran’s team’s materials - made using fungal mycelium and bacteria - are useful for at least a month.
She said: “This is exciting because we would like for the cells to be able to perform other functions."
Dr. Heveran explained that when the bacteria live within the material longer, their cells are able to perform a number of "useful" functions, including self-repairing when damaged and cleaning up contamination.
Materials made from once-living organisms have started to enter the commercial market.
But ones made with organisms that are still alive have proven difficult to perfect - because of their short viability periods and because they tend to lack the complex internal structures needed for many construction projects.
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To address those challenges, the Montana State team, led by PhD student Ethan Viles, explored using fungal mycelium as a scaffold for biomineralized materials, inspired by the fact that mycelium had previously been used as a scaffold for packaging and insulation materials.
The team worked with the fungus species Neurospora crassa and found that it could be used to craft materials with a variety of complex architectures.
Dr. Heveran said: “We learned that fungal scaffolds are quite useful for controlling the internal architecture of the material."
She added: “We created internal geometries that looked like cortical bone, but moving forward, we could potentially construct other geometries too.”
The team hopes their new biomaterials can help replace building materials with high carbon footprints - such as cement, which contributes up to 8% of all carbon dioxide emissions produced from human activities.
They plan to further improve the materials by coaxing the cells to live even longer and figuring out how to manufacture them efficiently on a large scale.
