Straw mushroom meal can replace up to 50% of soybean meal in whiteleg shrimp diets without harming growth or survival. Mushroom-derived compounds act as natural prebiotics, boosting beneficial gut bacteria and immune cell counts in shrimp. The findings point to a practical, lower-cost fungal protein alternative that could reduce aquaculture's reliance on environmentally costly feed ingredients. A Feed Industry Under Pressure Aquaculture feeds have a problem. Soybean meal, the

Clear-cutting boreal forests does not reduce the total number of ectomycorrhizal fungal species, but permanently alters which species are present, with effects lasting at least a century.

Mushroom species such as Pleurotus ostreatus can degrade up to 95% of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in controlled conditions, pointing to a powerful enzymatic toolkit for cleaning polluted land.

Researchers at Kyoto University and Chosun University used CRISPR/Cas9 to disable gene mbp1 in Pleurotus ostreatus , producing mycelium mats that were approximately 30% stiffer and 50% stronger in tension than unedited controls. The edited fungal strains also produced harder mycelium-based composites under compression testing, and lost the ability to form fruiting bodies, which simplifies industrial production by keeping the fungus in its material-forming growth phase. This

Through their underground networks, fungi physically connect to plant roots, enabling the transfer of nutrients and chemical signals between trees: a system ecologists call the "Wood Wide Web."