Harness the fungi or borrow their recipe?

Courtesy of MT Technology Review

A Deeper Look Needed at the Structure of Fungi

While currently being researched by material scientist Ning Zhang at Rutgers University as bio-utilization technique for shoring up aging concrete infrastructure (read more in this MIT Technology Review article), discovering the mechanism behind which the fungi, Trichoderma reesei, fosters calcium carbonate precipitation could yield even greater benefits. Learning the recipe means we don’t have to worry about altering the concrete to create conditions to keep the fungal spores intact, but rather could ideally develop technologies that serve the same function.

Contributed by Dr. Dayna Baumeister

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