permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: BD Now! Immune system boost & bio-remediation with mushrooms
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 14:40:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nancy Geffken <cgefren@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Biodynamic Food and Farming Discussion <bdnow@envirolink.org>
To: bdnow@envirolink.org

The recent issue of Resurgence magazine had a cookery
article on medicinal mushrooms, extolling their use as
immune system boosters (esp. reishi & shitake) - dried
& powdered in ginger tea simmered 40 minutes-1hour or
added to soups, etc.

This issue has another mushroom article by Paul
Stamets, on-line at
http://www.resurgence.org/2005/stamets232.htm which
mentions the immune system benefits but focuses on his
work with a variety of bio-remediation projects using
oyster mushrooms.

from the Stamets article:
As the tarpaulins were lifted from the other
companies' modules, the odour of oil was overwhelming.
Their piles remained starkly devoid of any life. When
the tarpaulin came off ours, the mound was literally
blanketed with oyster mushrooms, some as big as twelve
inches in diameter. Hundreds of pounds of oyster
mushrooms ultimately arose from this diesel pile.
Subsequent laboratory tests found virtually no toxic
oil residue in either the soil or the mushrooms, the
result of enzymes and acids that the fungi release
that break down such molecular complexes. This finding
is especially significant because hydrocarbons are the
basis for many other toxic industrial products,
including most pesticides and herbicides.

But the really exciting part of the story is what
happened next. After the mushrooms matured, flies came
in and laid eggs in them. Maggots appeared, birds flew
in, and other small mammals began to eat the mushrooms
and the maggots. The birds and animals carried in
seeds, and plants started growing. The mushrooms
initiated a process that led to rapid habitat
recovery. The polluted pile of dirt was transformed
into an ecosphere of life. That's what these mushrooms
are: keystone species that precipitate a catalytic,
downstream reaction that invites other life forms.
This is what Nature can do, but she needs a little
help from us.

Oyster mushrooms are one of the prime candidates for
breaking down petroleum-based and hydrocarbon-based
contaminants and pesticides. They are by far the
easiest of any mushrooms to grow, and they'll grow on
almost anything: old chairs, soggy money, or coffee
grounds. (They're also delicious and contain
lovastatin, a cholesterol-lowering agent.)

<>

Immune system boost & bio-remediation with mushrooms
http://www.resurgence.org/2005/stamets232.htm


2005 : Issue 232
Healing : Paul Stamets
Resurgence - connecting you to a world of ecology, art and culture

MUSHROOM MAGIC

Mushroom gills Photograph: Steve Taylor/Science Photo Library

Oyster mushrooms cleaning up oil spills - whatever next?

IT IS MY CONTENTION that mushrooms and fungi are far more crucial to the 
planet's ecological health than previously thought. We know that many 
mushrooms have powerful healing capabilities for humans, but what I've 
learned is that these organisms also appear to serve as primary healing 
agents for land and ecosystems. My study of fungi and mushrooms has 
demonstrated powerful new ways of rehabilitating degraded and polluted 
landscapes and enhancing soil fertility.

In some ways, we know less about the fungal domain today than our 
distant ancestors did. Ten thousand years ago we were all forest people, 
and there are many indications that our practical knowledge of mushrooms 
was far greater then. For example, the famous prehistoric iceman whose 
frozen remains were discovered high in the Alps on the border of Italy 
and Austria in 1991 had three wood conk mushrooms tethered to his right 
side. He probably used them for multiple purposes.

The mushrooms he prized sufficiently to carry with him on a long solo 
journey included a fragment of a birch polypore, which has very strong 
antibiotic properties. It's likely that he was using it to treat an 
infection or stomach disorder. He also carried some Fomes fomentarius, 
which can be hollowed out and used to carry fire because it burns only 
very slowly. This function would have been a matter of life and death in 
that era, allowing people and nomadic groups to travel without losing 
their ability to make fire. We've recently discovered that Fomes 
fomentarius seems to be effective against E. coli 0157, a potentially 
deadly bacterium often found in spoiled food. Although we've 
rediscovered this fact only in the past several years, it seems probable 
that the iceman's culture knew about Fomes fomentarius's antibacterial 
properties 5,300 years ago.

Mushrooms are widely represented in ancient art and sculpture throughout 
the world, and many species are still highly sought after as foods and 
medicines in a wide range of cultures. Our own culture in the United 
States may be the world's least mycophilic (mushroom friendly). 
Fortunately, however, we have become an increasingly multi-ethnic 
society; African, Asian, South American and Eastern and Western European 
immigrants, all much more mycophilic than Anglo-Americans, have brought 
their mushroom knowledge with them, to the great benefit of us all.

To understand the wondrous properties of many mushroom species, it's 
helpful to know some of the basics of how they grow. When we see a 
mushroom, we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. That 
mushroom is merely the fruiting body of a much more extensive organism, 
the mycelium, growing in the ground. Overlapping mosaics of mycelial 
mats actually permeate all the landmasses on the planet in the first two 
to four inches of soil. Such a mycelium may reside in the ground for 
years, and may, after many years, produce mushrooms.

The mushroom's emergence above ground is a major event in the life cycle 
of the mycelium, which otherwise grows invisibly in the soil. Like a 
fruit, the mushroom's function is reproductive: after mushrooms are 
formed, specialised cells on the gills or the pores produce spores that 
are jettisoned into space. When these spores are triggered into 
germination, they form a new mycelial mat.

Mycelia are remarkable phenomena. We have fossil records of mushrooms 
going back over ninety million years, to the earliest onset of the 
dinosaurs and vastly predating humans. Clearly they are highly 
successful life forms. Mycelia are everywhere, and they grow very 
quickly: they can travel from one edge of a room to the other in two to 
four weeks. A single cubic inch of soil can contain more than a mile of 
overlapping and interpenetrating cell networks, just one cell wide but 
extremely pervasive. In fact, mycelial mats constitute the largest 
organisms on the planet. The biggest one found to date extends over 
2,200 acres. It's 165 football fields long, 3 feet deep, and 2,400 years 
old.

Along with bacteria, fungi are the primary recyclers and digesters of 
life. We now know that the complexity of the fungal kingdom gives soils 
the ability to respond to catastrophes, whether from a tornado, a 
hurricane, or somebody chipping wood or building a house. My research 
shows that the saprophytic fungi (those that promote decay) in 
particular seem to be running after human beings as quickly as they can, 
repairing the damage we cause to ecosystems - which appears to be one of 
their ecological functions. Until very recently, this capacity of 
mycelia for ecological repair had not been sufficiently understood or 
appreciated.

Scientists are increasingly realising that species they considered to be 
parasitic fungi are not blights on the forest, as was once thought. Such 
fungi actually build soil so the landscape can become a pedestal for 
greater ecological diversity. Many mushrooms play an absolutely critical 
role in maintaining forest biodiversity. For example, mycorrhizal 
species such as chanterelles, matsutake and porcini, which are 
symbiotic, grow in association with the root zones of higher plants. 
With very few exceptions, virtually all deciduous trees and shrubs have 
mycorrhizal mushroom hosts that sheathe their roots, increase their 
capacity to absorb water, extend their root zones, and protect them from 
disease vectors.

The absence of mycelia in soils indicates an imperilled habitat; 
conversely, mushrooms in your garden are a sign of a healthy ecosystem. 
The mycelium produces enzymes and acids and compounds with antibiotic 
properties that break down large organic complexes of molecules into 
simpler forms that plants can absorb. Mycelia are the great soil 
builders of our planet: they create habitats in which vegetables and 
other plants can grow. This characteristic of fungi is also what makes 
them so useful in ecological restoration, where the need often is to 
break down wastes and toxins.

I FIND FASCINATING structural similarities among mushroom mycelia, the 
brain's neural networks, and the internet. Mushroom mycelia seem to form 
a sort of planet-wide biological internet that transmits information. If 
a twig falls in the forest, to the mycelia it's like a pebble being 
thrown into a pond. When trees or plant materials fall and die, mycelial 
networks sense it almost instantaneously. This process has been proven 
in the laboratory; for instance, if a dead beetle is put into a Petri 
dish, mycelial mats growing on the opposite edge of the dish will move 
quickly toward that nutritional source, through means we don't 
understand. The mats are geographically separated from the food source 
by what for them is a great distance - hundreds of thousands of microns 
- yet are able to sense it, target it, and stream mycelium to it 
rapidly. In Japan, scientists recently showed that a slime mould can 
repeatedly navigate a maze in the most efficient manner to capture 
nutrient sources with the least amount of cellular production, 
suggesting a form of cellular intelligence.

About 465 million years ago, humans shared a common ancestry with fungi. 
We share about 30% of our genes with fungi, giving us more in common 
genetically with them than with any other kingdom. So perhaps it's not 
such a leap to speculate that mycelial networks might display a form of 
natural intelligence. It's certainly compelling that human neural 
structures, mushroom mycelia, and the model of the internet all share a 
very similar decentralised, networked architecture. There is no 
point-specific central location on the internet or in a mycelial mass 
where you can fatally harm the entire organism.

Whatever one may think about the prospect of fungal intelligence, the 
practical uses of mushrooms are indisputable. Dusty, my partner, and I 
have been working in three main areas: preserving potentially useful 
mushroom species and fungal biodiversity in general, which above all 
entails protecting habitats, especially forests; doing research on the 
medicinal uses of mushrooms; and devising new technologies that use some 
of the remarkable properties of the fungal realm to clean up pollution, 
enrich agricultural soils, and create environmentally benign pesticides.

WE LIVE IN THE Pacific Northwest in the US, an ideal place to work on 
biodiversity. Our home and laboratories are located at the base of the 
Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, south of Seattle, and we go into 
the rain forest frequently to find new mushroom species and ancestral 
strains of fungi with interesting properties. The forest is in a sense 
our church, and we're passionate about protecting it.

Because mushrooms can be cloned just from their spores, the 
'wildcrafting' we do requires only a minuscule amount of physical 
material. (Cloning a mushroom is a natural process that does not involve 
genetic modification but simply takes tissue that will regrow in its 
natural expression.) We can walk into a grove of old-growth forest where 
there may be hundreds of mushrooms of one species, and our impact on the 
environment is minimal because we can select just one specimen, even 
just a small portion of one specimen. This procedure stands in direct 
contrast to the wild harvesting of mushrooms for profit, where people 
descend on chanterelle patches and harvest everything in sight.

We have four laboratories where our culture collection now houses 
several hundred species that are specific to our interests. After 
cloning specimens in the laboratory, we capture the phenotype - its 
genetic expression - and grow its mycelium, preserving the identical 
genetic individual. This way the strain is conserved, we hope forever, 
even if the habitat from which it came is tragically destroyed. The 
mycelium can be expanded into tons of mycomass. We grow about 250 
strains in our culture library and have commercialised about twenty-five 
species.

In the area of medicine, mounting research is confirming the enormous 
potential for new curative compounds waiting to be found in the fungal 
realm, including entirely new classes of medicines. In light of the fact 
that penicillin comes from a mould, it's surprising that the 
pharmaceutical industry has not paid more attention to this field. What 
I want to focus on here, however, is the capacity of fungi to heal 
polluted sites and ecosystems, and how they can be used for insect 
control. Fungi can be great allies for rehabilitating environments and 
recreating sustainable biotic communities.

We've begun several such projects. One involves helping habitat recovery 
where people are cutting trees. We're demonstrating a technique of 
putting spore mass into chainsaw oil, so that when trees are cut, the 
oil - which mushroom mycelia love - will inoculate the stumps and 
accelerate the processes of decomposition and restoration. When the 
stumps are inoculated, the mycelium propagates rapidly. Its 
water-transporting properties increase resident moisture and attract all 
sorts of other micro-organisms, so that when the stumps and the trees 
are cut, they become an oasis of life instead of just drying out.

Another of our remediation projects using fungal technologies took place 
after a diesel fuel spill near Bellingham, Washington. We entered a 
state-sponsored pilot project with other bioremediation companies that 
were using standard bacterial and enzymatic processes to try to 
decontaminate the soil, which was saturated with oil and mounded up in 
piles about three feet high, forty feet long, and six to eight feet 
wide. Each company was given a soil module to work on. We inoculated 
ours with the mycelium of oyster mushrooms, and, like the other 
companies, we then covered it with a tarpaulin and came back about six 
weeks later.

As the tarpaulins were lifted from the other companies' modules, the 
odour of oil was overwhelming. Their piles remained starkly devoid of 
any life. When the tarpaulin came off ours, the mound was literally 
blanketed with oyster mushrooms, some as big as twelve inches in 
diameter. Hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms ultimately arose from 
this diesel pile. Subsequent laboratory tests found virtually no toxic 
oil residue in either the soil or the mushrooms, the result of enzymes 
and acids that the fungi release that break down such molecular 
complexes. This finding is especially significant because hydrocarbons 
are the basis for many other toxic industrial products, including most 
pesticides and herbicides.

But the really exciting part of the story is what happened next. After 
the mushrooms matured, flies came in and laid eggs in them. Maggots 
appeared, birds flew in, and other small mammals began to eat the 
mushrooms and the maggots. The birds and animals carried in seeds, and 
plants started growing. The mushrooms initiated a process that led to 
rapid habitat recovery. The polluted pile of dirt was transformed into 
an ecosphere of life. That's what these mushrooms are: keystone species 
that precipitate a catalytic, downstream reaction that invites other 
life forms. This is what Nature can do, but she needs a little help from us.

Oyster mushrooms are one of the prime candidates for breaking down 
petroleum-based and hydrocarbon-based contaminants and pesticides. They 
are by far the easiest of any mushrooms to grow, and they'll grow on 
almost anything: old chairs, soggy money, or coffee grounds. (They're 
also delicious and contain lovastatin, a cholesterol-lowering agent.)

For several years I've been working with Battelle Laboratories to test 
some of my strains for bioremediation. We've discovered that at least 
one strain was able to break down highly toxic materials, including VX, 
the notorious nerve-gas agent. VX contains a recalcitrant molecule 
that's very difficult to degrade and is the core constituent of other 
chemical warfare agents, which poses a huge problem because the US 
government has them in storage in great quantities. The only other 
method of disposal currently used is incineration, which of course 
disperses it into the air and could be quite dangerous. A laboratory 
experiment we conducted for the Department of Defense, reported in the 
British military-affairs magazine Jane's Defence Weekly, showed that by 
using mushrooms we were able to break down the VX in an unprecedented 
manner, and its transformation into a harmless substance occurred very 
quickly. Since this mushroom is native to old-growth forest, I see a 
strong argument for saving our primeval forests as a matter of national 
defence.

Benign insect control is another area of key interest. The mushroom 
Termitomyces is well known to native peoples in Africa as a delicious 
edible fungus cultivated by termites. They live in its mycelium, where 
they produce a beautiful honeycomb-like structure from which mushrooms 
later pop out. The termites are absolutely dependent on these fungi and 
have developed a close collaboration with them: an interspecies 
symbiosis. Insects and mushrooms share a close and ancient relationship, 
which we can adapt for human ends.

How we began experimenting with insect-targeting species is a funny 
story. Despite putting great care and resources into creating our 
state-of-the-art laboratories, Dusty and I haven't much attended to our 
house, which was being seriously damaged by carpenter ants. It was 
already in really bad shape, and after the Olympia earthquake in 2001, 
the roof tilted another two or three inches. A friend of mine said, "If 
all the carpenter ants stopped holding hands in your house, it would 
fall down!"

I had to do something, but I didn't want to use toxic pesticides, 
especially in my home. Instead I started researching whether there might 
be fungi that are non-toxic to humans and other mammals but would target 
specific insects such as carpenter ants. I learned that big 
corporations, including Monsanto and Dow, had spent millions to develop 
biological controls using fungi spores to kill termites and other insect 
pests. Their thinking was that fungi use spores to infect insects, which 
then become launching pads for dispersing more spores. But the corporate 
entomologists and mycologists had used a different paradigm and missed 
something that we found.

The problem with the conventional spore-delivery systems these 
corporations devised is that insects aren't stupid. Millennia of 
evolution have taught them to avoid danger when they sense it. 
Commercially designed bait traps house lethal spores that would kill 
insects coming into contact with them. But the insects sense this peril, 
and instead of going into the bait traps, they head in the other direction.

I felt that the key was to find the precise fungal species that has 
evolved as a parasite to a specific insect (and therefore has developed 
chemical compounds that attract that insect), and, crucially, to entice 
the insects into eating its mycellium in its pre-sporulating phase. So I 
focused on selecting strains that delay sporulation. My goal was to grow 
mycelium rather than spores. Experimenting in my house, I put out a dish 
with about fifty kernels of rice that contained mycelium prior to 
sporulation, which I wanted to occur later as a delayed reaction. The 
ants took away all the kernels of rice, and one week later we had no 
more carpenter ants in the house. Our house was thereafter free of 
carpenter ants because the mouldy carcasses repelled future invasions.

It turns out that prior to sporulation some fungi develop attractant 
properties specific to an insect species they have evolved to 
parasitise. The fungi entice the insects to ingest and carry them away, 
thus spreading the infection. The insects are beguiled into coming 
closer, whereupon they gorge themselves with mycelium and take some back 
into the nest, breaking it up to feed their queen and brood. Thus the 
workers effectively spread mycelium throughout the nest, which it then 
colonises. When sporulation does occur, the entire insect colony is 
wiped out.

If these techniques pan out, we might be able to replace many pesticides 
with totally benign myco-insecticides. But let me be clear about my own 
philosophy as a biologist and ecologist. The point is not to wage a war 
of annihilation against whole insect species. I seek to restore balance 
and equilibrium; it's absolutely crucial to protect the insect genome, 
which is essential to the web of life. The point of such a 
myco-technology is that it be highly targeted and localised. Insects, 
fungi, and microbes have coevolved successfully over great periods of 
time without wiping each other out, and all have much to teach us. The 
more we study these relationships, the more likely we are to find other 
highly practical applications.

We're trying to apply our approaches to a variety of other uses. For 
example, logging roads cause siltation in salmon beds, posing a major 
threat to salmon. We're working on a strategy of putting wood chips 
infused with myco-pesticidal species of fungi onto logging roads. As the 
fungi grow, they provide myco-filtration, catching the silt before it 
gets to streams and helping accelerate regeneration of the landscape. 
And eventually the logging roads would become perimeter barriers 
preventing insect plagues, such as beetle blights, from sweeping across 
the forest.

By partnering with fungi and harnessing their extraordinary powers, we 
are entering a new frontier of knowledge. I believe that the future of 
our planet and our health will increasingly depend on our working 
synergistically with other organisms. Fungi can provide us with a 
powerful array of tools for living in harmony within our ecosystems. o

    Excerpted from Nature's Operating Instructions: The True 
Biotechnologies (A Bioneers Book), edited by Kenny Ausubel, published by 
Sierra Club Books and distributed by The University of California Press. 
© 2004 Collective Heritage Institute. To order in the UK, contact John 
Wiley & Sons, tel: 01243 843 291.

    Paul Stamets is an author of many mushroom books, including most 
recently Medicinal Mushrooms.