Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines: Our Lifelong Relationship with Fungi

Our lifelong relationship with fungi is thoroughly outlined in this absorbing survey, tracing back to ancient times when the mysteries of the mycelium plant were first noted by the scribes, though visual references to its fruit body, which we know as mushroom or toadstool, go back into the Paleolithic, when the measured toxicity of different species “opens and closes” the doors of perception, later explored by many recreationalists mid-twentieth century. Experimenters in the contemporary era continue to delve sporadically in the laboratory, where a great deal of investigation is today conducted into the less visually appealing fungi that inhabit the human body, visibly as an irritating skin squatter, or invisibly without specialist equipment, in the gut of all mammals. The interplay of bacteria and fungi in the microbiome involves trillions of the former and only billions of the latter, with research resources reflected in the split. Greater research attention is now being given to the role of fungi, often a humble yeast, with emerging research revealing fungi are the gamechangers in gastroenterology, with large studies in China comparing rural and urban populations, consuming wild and highly processed foods, neither kind making much difference to gut function as long as the growth of bacteria is stimulated, a symbiosis activating the immune system as well as enabling absorption of nutrients.Medicinal applications of plants and their attached fungi have been found with the preserved remains of the Neolithic Iceman found in the European mountains. Now big and little pharma are likewise pursuing the panacea of good health and long life. Fungal food supplements, as the law requires them to be called, are widely available in “health” stores, and the author is quick to pass judgement. There’s no preventing this author in joyfully outlining the molds and mushrooms in our diets, from brewing yeasts to the magic molds introduced into the world of cheeses and the vegetarian “meat” known as Quorn, now emerging from the biotechnology industry’s 30-meter-high vats, wherein our brave new world enables the fermentation of fungi to convert starch, in the form of corn syrup, to a protein; an “economic” and endless quantity of substitute meat. Another yeast is used on the syrup to manufacture bioethanol, a fuel substitute. These innovations are power-expensive and, inevitably, have a carbon dioxide by-product . . . but the science is fascinating, if it can be developed for greater efficiency; enthusiasm for the industrialization of novel processes and outcomes of course needs to be accounted for within a total material economy of production. From nourishment, including a lengthy section on the hazards and precautions for wildgathered fungi in field and forest, we are taken back into the laboratory to survey the natural pharmacopeia of fungi, as used for centuries up to the modern day by different cultures, including those of the Americas. The modern pharmaceutical desire is to isolate the active ingredients, while the traditions continue to use the whole plant. The antibiotic penicillin was made famous by the chance discovery of an active mold; the drug’s timely arrival saved countless casualties in the war that followed. Another drug commonly used to regulate cholesterol came from a fungus originating in Norway in the 1970s. though it is from the feeding molds that such medicines are made. Some molds are now manufactured in the lab without any living fungus involvement.The health benefits afforded by fungi are countered in a chapter describing an opportunistic fungus specializing in taking up residence in the brain, a subset of pathogenic fungi that can cause disease all over the body, overcoming the immune system that is otherwise so well maintained by the other group of fungi symbiotically working in conjunction with bacteria in the microbiome. The very places where good health is maintained have a running fight with bacteria. Hospitals have also to control opportunist fungi. Advanced research employing complex DNA techniques is unraveling many of the mycelia mysteries, seeking to separate the useful or benign organisms from the species harmful to us hapless humans.