{"id":162277,"date":"2025-04-28T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=162277"},"modified":"2025-04-22T15:45:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T13:45:03","slug":"living-fungus-based-building-material-repairs-itself-for-over-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/living-fungus-based-building-material-repairs-itself-for-over-a-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Living fungus-based building material repairs itself for over a month"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\u00a9 University of Montana<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Engineers have developed a building material that uses the root-like mycelium of a fungus and bacteria cells. Their results, publishing April 16 in the Cell Press journal\u00a0Cell Reports Physical Science<\/em><\/a>, show that this material – which is manufactured with living cells at low temperatures – is capable of self-repairing and could eventually offer a sustainable alternative for high-emission building materials like concrete.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBiomineralized 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,\u201d said corresponding author Chelsea Heveran, an assistant professor at Montana State University<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Compared to other similar biomaterials, which typically are only usable for a few days or weeks, Heveran\u2019s team\u2019s materials – which are made using fungal mycelium and bacteria – are useful for at least a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThis is exciting, because we would like for the cells to be able to perform other functions,\u201d says Heveran<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When the bacteria live within the material longer, their cells could have more time to perform useful functions such as self-repair or cleaning up contamination. Self-healing and remediation were not tested in this work, but the extended viability of these materials lays the groundwork for these functionalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Materials made from once-living organisms are beginning to enter the commercial market, but those made with organisms that are still alive have proven challenging to perfect – both because of their short viability periods and because they tend to lack the complex internal structures needed for many construction projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To address these challenges, the team, led by first author Ethan Viles of Montana State University, 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 researchers worked with the fungus species Neurospora crassa and found that it could be used to craft materials with a variety of complex architectures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe learned that fungal scaffolds are quite useful for controlling the internal architecture of the material,\u201d said Heveran<\/strong>. \u201cWe created internal geometries that looked like cortical bone, but moving forward, we could potentially construct other geometries too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers hope their new biomaterials can help replace building materials with high carbon footprints like cement, which contributes up to 8% of all carbon dioxide emissions produced from human activities. As a next step, they plan to further optimize the materials by coaxing the cells to live even longer and figuring out how to manufacture them efficiently on a larger scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This research was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell Reports Physical Science<\/em>, Viles et al., \u201cMycelium as a scaffold for biomineralized\u00a0engineered living materials.\u201d\u00a0https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-reports-physical-science\/fulltext\/S2666-3864(25)00116-X<\/a>; Cell Reports Physical Science<\/em>; DOI 10.1016\/j.xcrp.2025.102517<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About Cell Reports Physical Science<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Cell Reports Physical Science<\/em> (@CellRepPhysSci<\/a>), published by Cell Press, is a new broad-scope, open access journal that publishes cutting-edge research across the spectrum of the physical sciences, including chemistry, physics, materials science, energy science, engineering, and related interdisciplinary work. Visit: https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-reports-physical-science\/home<\/a>. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Engineers have developed a building material that uses the root-like mycelium of a fungus and bacteria cells. Their results, publishing April 16 in the Cell Press journal\u00a0Cell Reports Physical Science, show that this material – which is manufactured with living cells at low temperatures – is capable of self-repairing and could eventually offer a sustainable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":162286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"The root-like mycelium of a fungus and bacteria cells could eventually offer a sustainable alternative for high-emission building materials like concrete","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[13383,5838,12430,11749,19092],"supplier":[822],"class_list":["post-162277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bacteria","tag-bioeconomy","tag-buildingmaterial","tag-construction","tag-fungalmycelium","supplier-montana-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162277"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=162277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}