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I have read tons of articles and seen presentations about people making materials with mycelium. From mycelium bricks to mycelium fabrics. I want to understand the processes that allow this. That is, I want to learn the theory about how mycelium can be used to create materials and what properties those materials will have. What should I read?

I guess it should be possible to start by reading the patents I have seen, but they probably assume some knowledge. My background is mostly computational, so I have read up on systems biology, computational biology and mathematical biology. However, I don't know how much of that is relevant, so for the sake of this question, lets assume I am a complete beginner.

What is required to understand the patents in this field?

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  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately this question is a bit too open-ended for a Stack Exchange format. I can see tons of tutorials on how to make the mycelium products - what exactly is it that you want to know? Systems and comp bio will be more or less useless here, mathematical slightly - growth curves etc. But all that is moot because you will need to actually grow the fungus and the best way to do that is to have a go... $\endgroup$
    – bob1
    Commented Jan 29 at 21:02
  • $\begingroup$ @bob1 I am not looking for tutorials. I am looking for theory. That is, I want to understand what is going on and how it can potentially be modelled. That is, which variables can be tweaked to change material properties. $\endgroup$
    – Avatrin
    Commented Jan 29 at 22:01
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    $\begingroup$ But there's nothing in your question that indicates what you want - all you say is "From mycelium bricks to mycelium fabrics. I want to get into this." Which to me means you are interested in making them, not the theory. If you had said "I want to understand the theory" that might make it a suitable question . $\endgroup$
    – bob1
    Commented Jan 29 at 22:05
  • $\begingroup$ @bob1 Fair enough, I agree that it is poorly worded; I assumed that the remainder of the question would be enough to clarify what I was looking for. I'll edit it. $\endgroup$
    – Avatrin
    Commented Jan 29 at 23:32
  • $\begingroup$ @Avatrin The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to “mycelium modeling” is finite element analysis. I think that you can find a lot of deeper theoretical materials there (for example): sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264127518307482 $\endgroup$
    – ayr
    Commented Jan 31 at 7:22

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As one of the early investors in the field of mycelium based materials, I can give a brief answer.

Mycelia are the underground cellular network of some fungi and bacteria. Under some conditions they can form dense enough networks to produce various materials.

public domain drawing of mycelium

The main effort in mycelial materials I believe is in private companies right now. Mycelial materials are being used to make leather, packing materials, and scaffolds for plantbased meat. New applications are coming on line regularly these days as fungi are deeply interesting, so this list should be longer.

The details on how to create these materials is rarely made public but starting by growing your own fungal mats is available and a great place to start. The founder of Mycoworks, Phil Ross is an artist who made furniture and some building material from mycelia as well. He has done workshops and kits to grow his favorite fungi, the medicinal mushroom reishi are available.

Image uploading doesn't appear to be working at this moment but if you follow the links you can see that the texture, flexibility, hardness and toughness of mycelia represent a broad range of material properties. It should be expected that the field will continue to broaden.

In addition to these topics, a good place to start is reading the renown mycologist Paul Stamets. His book, "Mycelium running" talks about the uses of fungi in sustainability exhaustively, touching on this topic and quite a few others.

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