Fungi influence ice formation in groundbreaking study

Hi there 🍄 

This week’s highlights include new ways mushrooms could show up in everyday household items and an incredible paper flower botanical artist.

Fungi, water, and the weather

Ice ice baby 🧊 A new study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation found that the fungus Fusarium acuminatum has a unique ability to facilitate water freezing into ice at temperatures where water usually remains liquid. These fungal ice-nucleators are more efficient than non-living sources like dust in triggering ice crystallization. This groundbreaking research opens up possibilities for practical applications in areas like food preservation and cloud seeding…

Can we control the weather? ☁️ Yes! And no! Cloud seeding is like adding special particles to clouds to make them produce more rain or snow, kind of like that scene in Twister, but different. We use cloud seeding to…

1. 🌧️ Create more rain, especially in arid regions, to replenish reservoirs, support agriculture, and reduce drought.

2. 🏂️ Create more snow for winter ski resorts and increase springtime runoff for the water supply.

3. 🪨 Generate less hail to reduce overall damage because no one likes hearing the sound of golfball-sized hail break a window.

4. 🌫️ Disperse fog, especially at airports to improve visibility. As a kid, I loved 90-minute fog delays. Now? Not so much.

Quotable 💬 Solving the puzzle of biological control of ice formation drives scientists to collaborate,” said Valeria Molinero, study co-lead and director of the University of Utah’s Henry Eyring Center for Theoretical Chemistry. “Each of us has a piece of the knowledge, but altogether we can do so much.” 👉️ Read more.

The fruiting body fibers

Mycelial magic 🪄 Scientists have discovered a new way to create a biomaterial from mycelial fibers. Mushrooms are excellent bio-based alternatives to synthetic materials that rely on plastics derived from fossil fuels, but this new method opens their sustainable potential even further.

The fruiting body strikes again 🍄 Instead of cultivating mycelium fibers on substrate, the most common way, researchers found that these mycelial fibers could be extracted directly from the fruiting body of the mushroom. This is a new way for us to fully use the residue from mushroom extracts and even make inedible fungi production more viable. We currently uses mycelial fibers in…

1. 📦️ Custom packaging material

2. 🏠️ Sustainable building insulation

3. 👜 Leather-like textiles

4. 🛋️ Sturdy furniture

5. 🎨 Sculptural art

Quotable 💬 “Mushrooms, previously known primarily as a food resource, will now be utilized in everyday household items, allowing people to choose products that are safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly,” said study leader Dr. Satomi Tagawa. 👉️ Read more.

Around the web

• 🚀 Jessica Atkin, a Texas A&M graduate student, successfully grew chickpeas in simulated lunar soil, in one small step for women and one giant leap for space agriculture. The soil conditions were made possible by using none other than fungi to amend the moon dust.

• 🎧️ Australian scientists discovered that playing sounds to soil fungi and teabags help them grow. Soundscapes played at 70-90 decibels and 8KHz pitch stimulated the growth of beneficial soil fungi, which has scientists excited about the possibilities of soil health restoration. The expanding field of ecoacoustics aims to understand how sound affects soil microbial communities.

• 🗽 New York City’s first mushroom-focused restaurant, Third Kingdom, opens on February 1st. The moody, Gothic aesthetic is a 50-seat restaurant with handmade Spalted Maple wood tables and mushroom artwork. Menu items include a Lion’s Mane dumpling and a weekly rotating “Forager’s Corner.” Chef Juan Pajarito heads the all-fungus menu.

Featured artist: Ann Wood

Ann Wood is a paper flower botanical artist whose creations are mesmerizing blend of sculpture and illustration. Each piece seems to defy reality and trick the eye into a dreamy world filter that you wish translated to everything else. The harmonious fusion of botanical and insect themes capture the delicate beauty of nature in a static, yet vividly lifelike form. The artistry invites viewers into a world where the boundaries between the natural and the crafted blur. For a closer look at this enchanting art, check out her studio, Woodlucker, co-founded with Dean Lucker.