Celebrity mycologist. You might say it’s an oxymoron, but only if you recognize the word in the first place. After all, mycologists — scientists who study fungus — are possibly the last folks one might expect to be the hit of a cocktail party.
Yet, mycologist Paul Stamets has parlayed his passion for mushrooms into revolutionary work as an author, public speaker, film star, friend to Leonardo DiCaprio and foe of… Saddam Hussein?
Part entrepreneur, part mad scientist, Stamets owns and operates Fungi Perfecti, a gourmet and medicinal mushroom business based near Olympia, WA. He is wholly dedicated to unearthing new ways to use fungi to neutralize toxic contamination, produce potent anti-viral medications, heal damaged ecosystems and more. The author of several books, including The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home and Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, Stamets sits on the editorial board of The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, is an advisor to the Program for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School, starred in DiCaprio’s enviro-documentary The 11th Hour, and has conducted mycological research with the State of Washington, the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.
Humans need to overcome our “biological racism” toward this ancient life form, says Stamets, and embrace their 21st century potential to clean up oil spills, “mycoremediate” damaged soils and forests, fight cancer — maybe even provide the antidotes to the bioweapons of the future.
Where do fungi fit into the bigger environmental picture?
Fungi create the food web. The first organisms that came to land, 1.3 billion years ago, were fungi. As they munched on rocks, algae came along, and lichens — algae and fungi symbiotically coexisting together — and then plant communities, and then insects and then larger animals. And so, on the path to these developing ecosystems, the vanguard species are fungi.
In 100 years we’ve exported enormous amounts of carbon, and we’re bankrupting the ecosystem. This human habit of trying to reign in nature — to control it and to utilize the nutrient resources without replenishing the soil from which they came — is ecological bankruptcy. And as we bankrupt the ecosystem, what happens? Well, the rule of nature is that when an organism exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, then diseases proliferate, and that species plummets to near extinction.
So not only do we have the exodus of nutrients out of the carbon bank in the soil reservoirs, but on top of that we’re placing pollutants and toxic chemicals [in the soil], which has an even greater impact in harming the biology of the soils. The soil ecosphere that’s been built up since the last ice age (in the past 10,000 years) is being increasingly robbed of nutrients. And the thinning of these soils is a direct threat to sustainability that could lead to ecological collapse.
Help! Can fungi save us?
Fungi are the mycomagicians of nature, in that they create soil. And so engaging these fungi — if everyone individually began to compost, began to grow their own food, began to localize their use of resources and reinvest literally in their backyards as standard practice throughout the world, then I think that would create a big difference.
People may not realize we are more closely related to fungi than we are to any other kingdom. We separated from fungi about 650 million years ago. We exhale carbon dioxide; so do fungi. We inhale oxygen; so do fungi. We went the overland route: we encapsulate our nutrients and digest them. Fungi went the underground route, and externally digest nutrients through these fine, web-like cells called mycelium.
The largest [underground fungus is] estimated to be over 2000 years in age, and it’s over 22 acres in size. These organisms have become very smart in adapting to catastrophe — sudden changes in the ecosystem. If they encounter some toxin, an eco-barrier, some kind of adverse event, then they adapt and still manage to surge forward.
What’s a good example of how fungi adapt to catastrophic environmental conditions?
I gave Battelle Laboratories in Sequim, Washington, 26 strains of my fungi to test as a method of breaking down toxic waste. Unbeknownst to me at the time, they also tested my strains against VX, which Saddam Hussein used against the Kurds. VX has a core constituent complex called DMMP, (dimethyl methylphosphonate), a very potent nerve toxin.
Well, long story short, after about 12 successive transfers over a period of several weeks, two strains of fungi adapted to using DMMP as a sole nutrient source. Now 24 strains did not; they died out. But two of them survived and were able to adapt to feeding off of a toxic nerve gas constituent, something the U.S. military is eager to find out how to decompose, and also to protect, potentially, soldiers in the field. These fungi adapted by creating enzyme suites target-specific to the only available nutrient, which was a toxin.
That story reverberates in a thousand different directions. We can use these fungi for breaking down hydrocarbon-based contaminants like oil, which most pesticides are based upon. We can break down PCBs, PCPs, dioxin, and lots of otherwise recalcitrant toxins that kill life. These fungi can not only neutralize them, but also make them into fertilizer that breeds life. Fungi are the gateway species that leads to ecosystems re-flourishing.
Is mycodiversity under threat, or are these organisms doing well, relatively speaking?
Mycodiversity is highly under threat, due to loss of habitat. We’re involved in a research project [on Cortez Island, British Columbia] to save an old-growth fungus, a polypore called agarikon. It grows exclusively in the old-growth forests, on primarily Douglas fir trees. It’s thought to be extinct in Europe.
It’s been our mission to gather as many strains of this fungus from the old growth trees. I’ve been working with a bioshield program in the U.S. Defense Department with other researchers on novel anti-viral and anti-bacterial agents coming from this fungus. I think it’s safe to say that should this research also prove itself in clinical studies, then the value of this fungus in these old growth forests trivializes the value of the timber board feet of lumber. It becomes extremely valuable for saving potentially hundreds of millions of lives. It presents a valid argument for saving the old growth forests as a matter of national defense.
Our security is also under threat from the impacts of global warming. Do fungi have a role to play in mitigating climate change?
As we lose soil — and fungi create soil — we lose plants. As we lose plants, we lose the re-uptake cycles of sequestering the carbon dioxide into the soil. As we defoliate the planet, we are destroying the lungs of our ecosystem. We’re suffering now, literally, from a form of ecological asthma.
I believe both animals and ecosystems have immune systems, and fungi are the bridge between the two. Fungi empower the immune systems of our ecosystems by repairing the damage we inflict.
You have an idea for a fungal-derived fuel, isn’t that right?
We call it “myconol”: generating ethanol from mycelium on cellulose. But it’s an after-consequence — a product at the very end of a long value chain of other products we can get through the decomposition of cellulose using mycelium. For instance, from mycelium growing on cellulose, we can get anti-viral and anti-bacterial agents. We can get enzymes for breaking down toxic wastes. We can get compounds that can control insects, we can get compounds that help our immune systems — which is a big focus of our research in terms of fighting cancer, et cetera. And then, near to the last step of this process, the mycelium has converted the cellulose into fungal sugars, which are fermentable. So we can make ethanol from that. And after that, we still have material that can be used as compost to put back in the soil.
We hope in the next few years to be able to provide a little kit: add spores of this fungus and spores of that yeast and generate ethanol in five gallon buckets. You’ll be able to power your own vehicle with myconol from the carbon footprint on your own land.
What can people who live in cities do, if they don’t have a backyard or a lot of space to work with?
We have a new project called the Life Box: boxes in molded fiber materials infused with tree seeds, with mycorrhizal fungi and saprophytic fungi. Germinate them, and you create the beginning of an old-growth forest on your patio in New York City.
Now this miniature forest is a square about 12 inches by 12 inches, with trees that are all netted together by the mycelium. These trees only become one to two inches high the first year. The second year you need to put them into a pot. I think most people, in a year’s time, staring at this little developing forest, can think of somewhere to put these trees into the ground. And then with Google Earth, you’ll be able to confirm the trees you planted from the Life Box do indeed exist. One tree, after 30 years on average, sequesters about one ton of carbon. Life Boxes could become the currency of the carbon credit economy.
Sounds like a great teaching tool, as well.
We teach our children how to act through patterning. As we take smaller life forms and nurse them to maturity, we pass on a heritage of knowledge of how to create living systems.