Researchers at the University of Strathclyde found that wheat bran and oat additives gave living Pleurotus ostreatus beechwood composites the highest mean peak compressive stress, at 29.77 and 31.45 kPa. Of four surface-area measures taken by nitrogen adsorption and X-ray micro-computed tomography, the surface area accessible to fungal hyphae followed the strength ranking most closely.

A bioRxiv preprint reports that classic psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin and mescaline) increased the number of "gateway" regions in the brain's frontoparietal control and dorsal attention networks, while MDMA and amphetamine did not follow the same pattern. The authors reanalysed resting-state fMRI scans from two Basel crossover studies using integrated information decomposition, which separates information shared across brain regions from information that emerges only when

The ColorFun project, led by MNEXT, has planned a larger-scale fermentation of a blue fungal dye and is preparing production of orange dyes. The dyes are made by fungi through fermentation of biobased raw materials, and the project studies production, extraction, purification and application together. First application tests with NPSP in biobased composite panels have flagged colour intensity and purification as areas needing work, showing what must be solved before the

BMC Ingredients has published a paper in Applied Microbiology reporting that third-party testing of dried Rhiza mycoprotein found 60.4mg of ergothioneine and 20.3mg of spermidine per 100g. Rhiza is made from the fungus Neurospora crassa by submerged fermentation, and the measurements came from a single production lot. The author states that the results do not establish bioavailability or health benefits, and proposes a four-stage research programme to test whether the compoun

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) developed an imaging method, metabolome informed proteome imaging (MIPI), that visualises plant breakdown inside a leafcutter ant fungus garden, and published it in Nature Chemical Biology. The method scans thin garden sections with a laser to locate metabolites, plant polymers and enzymes, and the team used it to identify the fungus Leucoagaricus gongylophorus as the primary degrader of plant material. PNNL says the