Fungal Frontiers: Biosensing Review Reveals Fungi's Potential as new Generation of Biosensors
- Marc Violo
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Filamentous fungi produce enzymes, nanomaterials, and electrical signals that could underpin a new generation of biosensors capable of detecting pollutants, glucose, and pathogens.
Mycelium networks generate structured electrical impulses that researchers are beginning to harness for unconventional computing and wearable sensing devices.
A comprehensive review published in Biosensors maps five years of progress across molecular, material, and ecosystem scales, identifying both remarkable potential and significant remaining hurdles.
From Enzyme Factories to Living Circuits
Fungi have long served biotechnology quietly, providing the enzymes behind antibiotic production, fermentation, and food processing. Yet a review published in February 2026 by Gerardo Grasso of the Italian National Research Council argues that filamentous fungi, the mould and mushroom-forming species, deserve recognition as versatile platforms for biosensing across an unusually wide range of scales and applications.
At the molecular level, the case rests on what researchers call the fungal secretome, the collection of proteins, enzymes, and other molecules that fungi release into their environment. Enzymes such as laccase, glucose oxidase, and cellobiose dehydrogenase are already being integrated into electrochemical sensors capable of detecting phenolic pollutants, glucose in blood, galactose in dairy products, and nitrate in river water. Fungal laccases, extracted from species such as Trametes versicolor, are particularly well studied: their ability to oxidise phenolic compounds at low electrical potentials makes them attractive for environmental monitoring. Detection limits reported in recent studies reach the nanomolar range, broadly comparable to non-biological electrode-based systems, though the two approaches differ significantly in their mechanisms and practical constraints.
Beyond enzymes, small proteins called hydrophobins, produced by filamentous fungi to help them colonise surfaces, are proving unexpectedly useful in biosensor design. Because hydrophobins self-assemble spontaneously at interfaces, they offer a way to anchor other biomolecules, such as antibodies or enzymes, in an oriented and stable fashion on electrode or acoustic-wave surfaces, a step that often determines whether a biosensor performs well in a real sample or only under idealised laboratory conditions.
Mycelium as Sensing Material and Computing Substrate
A second strand of progress moves away from purified molecules entirely and treats the living mycelium, the branching network of threads that makes up the body of a fungus, as a material in its own right. When grown on agricultural waste substrates, mycelium consolidates into lightweight composites that researchers are exploring as biodegradable alternatives to packaging foams and building insulation. The same mycelium-based composites are now being examined for sensing functions: electrodes inserted into colonised blocks record electrical activity that changes measurably with applied pressure, moisture content, and chemical exposure.
The electrical behaviour of mycelium has attracted particular interest. Studies on species including the pink oyster mushroom, Pleurotus djamor, and the bracket fungus Ganoderma resinaceum have recorded what researchers describe as action-potential-like electrical spikes propagating through fungal tissues, with amplitudes typically between 0.1 and 6 millivolts and durations of several minutes. One analysis found that the statistical distributions of spike-train lengths in four species bore a resemblance to word-length distributions in human languages, a finding interpreted cautiously as evidence of structured information encoding rather than random noise. Researchers have since used living mycelium composites of Pleurotus ostreatus to implement Boolean logic operations, and shiitake mycelium has been fashioned into memristors, electronic components that retain a memory of previous electrical states, operating reliably at frequencies up to 6,000 Hz.
Fungal skins, thin sheets of mycelium grown in liquid culture and dried into flexible foils, extend these ideas toward wearable devices. Samples derived from Ganoderma lucidum have been shown to support laser-patterned copper circuits, near-field communication tags, and strain sensors while remaining biodegradable. Living versions wrapped around robotic models responded to touch and light with distinct electrical signatures, hinting at a future in which biological material and electronics are more tightly intertwined. Such engineered living materials capable of self-healing and adaptive response represent an emerging direction across several fields, and fungi appear increasingly well placed to contribute.
Challenges and the Road Ahead
Grasso's review is candid about what remains unsolved. Reproducibility is a recurring concern: biological variability between fungal strains, growth conditions, and electrode placements produces inconsistencies that complicate direct comparison between studies. Most demonstrations of fungal electrical computing have been conducted with living tissue, which requires continuous moisture, degrades upon desiccation, and drifts physiologically over time. The slow dynamics of electrical spiking, typically measured in minutes rather than milliseconds, impose constraints on any application requiring rapid response.
Safety and regulatory considerations receive dedicated attention. Several fungi used in research, including Aspergillus and Trametes species, release airborne spores that can act as allergens. Crude fungal extracts may contain mycotoxins requiring careful management before any device reaches human-adjacent applications. For clinical or diagnostic use, fungal-based platforms would need to navigate European medical device regulations, including the Medical Device Regulation and In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation, frameworks designed primarily for conventional materials.
The review also identifies artificial intelligence as a unifying thread. Machine-learning approaches are improving the interpretation of complex fungal electrical signals, accelerating the identification of useful fungal enzymes from genomic databases, and enabling fungal-inspired optimisation algorithms modelled on the resource-allocation strategies of mycorrhizal networks. Understanding how mycelium networks coordinate growth and communication across vast underground systems may, in time, inform both ecological monitoring tools and the design of distributed sensor architectures.
The fungal kingdom, as Grasso notes, has been quietly shaping terrestrial ecosystems for over a billion years. Whether it can be persuaded to shape the next generation of biosensors is a question whose answer is beginning, cautiously, to come into focus.
