Mushroom Manifesto a Crusading Mycologist Says Fungi Are Key to Human and Environmental Health — and Can Clean up Everything from Oil Spills to Nuclear Meltdowns

MuShRooM ManIfeSto A crusading mycologist says fungi are key to human and environmental health — and can clean up everything from oil spills to nuclear meltdowns

38 DISCOVER © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com by kenneth miller MuShRooM ManIfeSto A crusading mycologist says fungi are key to human and environmental health — and can clean up everything from oil spills to nuclear meltdowns

Paul Stamets shows off mushrooms in a growing room at Fungi Perfecti, his family business and farm. Work done there has inspired potential solutions to such global problems as radioactive waste, global warming, oil spills and cancer.

Left: Pioppino mushrooms (Agrocybe aegerita) induced tumor regression, revers- ing cancer in lab mice. The species also controlled blood sugar in diabetic mice.

photography by Stuart Isett, except where noted

39 07/08.2013 © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com or Paul Stamets, the phrase “mush- biphenyls, or PCBs. Mycelia change “sentient membrane” that room hunt” does not denote a leisurely Most Americans think of has “the long-term health of Fstroll with a napkin-lined basket. This mushrooms as ingredients in their behavior in the host environment in morning, a half-dozen of us are struggling soup or intruders on a well-tend- mind.” To some, such to keep up with the mycologist as he ed lawn. Stamets, however, response to the language seems uncomfort- charges through a fir-and-alder forest on cherishes a grander vision, one ably metaphysical. Cortes Island, British Columbia. It’s raining trumpeted in the subtitle of his environment. Yet Stamets’ ideas have steadily, and the moss beneath our feet is 2005 book, Mycelium Running: gained an expanding slick, but Stamets, 57, barrels across it like a How Mushrooms Can Help Save When you walk audience among main- grizzly bear heading for a stump full of the World. Mushroom-producing stream scientists, environ- honey. He vaults over fallen trees, scrambles fungi, he believes, can serve as through the mental engineers, federal up muddy ravines, plows through shin-deep game changers in fields as forest, they leap officials and Silicon Valley puddles in his rubber boots. He never slows disparate as medicine, forestry, investors. His 2008 talk at down, but he halts abruptly whenever a pesticides and pollution control. up. They know the TED Conference, the specimen demands his attention. He has spent the past quarter- annual hajj of tech barons This outing is part of a workshop on the century preaching that gospel to you’re there. and thought leaders, has fungi commonly known as mushrooms — anyone who will listen. snagged more than 1.5 a class of organisms whose cell walls are If his data were less persuasive, he might million hits since it was posted online; it stiffened by a molecule called chitin instead be dismissed as an eccentric myco-utopian. also earned Stamets invitations to of the cellulose found in plants, and whose Stamets has no regular academic or brainstorming sessions with Bill Gates, most ardent scientific evangelist is the man institutional affiliation; his research is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the guys who ahead of us. Stamets is trying to find a funded mostly by the profits from his run Google. patch of chanterelles, a variety known for private company, Fungi Perfecti, which sells “It helps that he’s brilliant,” says Eric its exquisite flavor. But the species that stop gourmet and medicinal mushrooms (along Rasmussen, a former Defense Department him in his tracks, and bring a look of bliss with growing kits, mushroom-derived scientist and disaster expert collaborating to his bushy-bearded face, possess qualities supplements and mushroom-related books with Stamets to decontaminate the zone far beyond the culinary. and knickknacks) by mail order and at around Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor He points to a clutch of plump oyster health food stores. With his Woodstockian with mushrooms. Rasmussen compares mushrooms halfway up an alder trunk. hirsuteness and frank enthusiasm for Stamets to visionary entrepreneur-scien- “These could clean up oil spills all over the mushrooms of the psychoactive sort, tists like Thomas Edison or “some of the planet,” he says. He ducks beneath a rotting Stamets often comes across more as a truly fine amateur naturalists or astrono- log, where a rare, beehive-like Agarikon hippie mystic than a dispassionate mers of the 17th and 18th centuries — peo- dangles. “This could provide a defense scientist. “Our bodies and our environs are ple who were experts in their fields, but had against weaponized smallpox.” He plucks a habitats with immune systems,” he writes other ways to occupy their days.” tiny, gray Mycena alcalina from the soil and in Mycelium Running, and fungi “are a Stamets occupies some of his days holds it under our noses. “Smell that? It common bridge between the two.” He teaching fungus aficionados and would-be seems to be outgassing chlorine.” To describes mycelium, the web of fibrous mycotechnologists, both here at the Stamets, that suggests it can break down tissue from which mushrooms spring, as eco-oriented Hollyhock Lifelong Learning toxic chlorine-based polychlorinated “the neurological network of nature,” a Centre and at his mushroom farm in Washington state. He runs a business that has 47 employees and ships goods Mycorrhizal fungi, which form mushrooms, penetrate tree roots with mycelia, contributing nitrogen and worldwide. Somehow, he also manages to mineral salts in exchange for sugars. juggle a diverse array of experiments — often in tandem with researchers at universities or nonprofit outfits — aimed Tree roots at finding fungal solutions to global Above-ground problems. “The path to the future,” he likes fruiting body to say, “is the path of the mycelium.”

A PLANETARY WEB However poetically expressed, Stamets’ notion that mushrooms bridge human and environmental immune systems is grounded in solid biology. On the evolu- Below-ground tionary tree, the animal and fungal mycelium kingdoms sprout from the same branch,

40 DISCOVER © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com splitting from each other long after plants diverged. And fungi knit together the lives The cottony of plants, animals and the Earth itself in THE FUNGAL MIND mycelium some very concrete ways. of a Garden When you look at a mushroom, what you’re seeing is a Giant There are an estimated 1.5 million mushroom fungus’s fruit. It emerges from a mass of fibrous tissue species of fungi, comprising yeasts and grows on known as mycelium, which penetrates whatever material fermented molds along with mushroom-producing the mushroom is growing on. To the naked eye, mycelium wood chips. macrofungi. All these organisms share resembles cottony fluff or cobwebs. Viewed through an certain basic traits with animals: They electron microscope, however, it’s an intricate weave of branching, threadlike membranes whose inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, structure, Stamets notes, resembles a network of brain cells. And that, he argues, is evidence that as we do, and they are susceptible to many fungi possess a kind of intelligence. The analogies are striking. Brains and mycelia grow new connections, or prune existing ones, in of the same germs. Like us, they get their response to environmental stimuli. Both use an array of chemical messengers to transmit signals energy by consuming other life forms rather throughout a cellular web. (One part of a mycelium, for example, can order another to send nutrients than by photosynthesis. from hundreds of feet away.) The similar structures of fungal and neural networks, Stamets believes, But a fungus’s body is radically different reflect the fact that both systems evolved to do similar jobs — and do them with maximum efficiency. from an animal’s. Yeasts are unicellular, But he doesn’t stop there. Stamets perceives mycelium-like patterns in the information architecture while molds and macrofungi take the form of the Internet, in the matrices of string theory, in computer models of the web of dark matter suffusing the cosmos. Such recurrences, he believes, are signs of an evolutionary intelligence of mycelia, networks of threadlike mem- governing reality itself. “Nature tends to build on its successes,” he writes in his book Mycelium branes, each a single cell thick, that can Running. “The mycelial archetype can be seen throughout the universe.” — KM infest a rotting orange, infiltrate acres of woodland or fuse together to make a mushroom. Mycelia absorb nutrients from their surroundings and can rapidly change their growth patterns and other behavior in response to the environment. “They have cellular intelligence,” Stamets says. “When you walk through the forest, they leap up in search of debris to feed on. They know you’re there.” Scanning electron microscope images of human brain cells (left) and mushroom mycelium. When fungi colonized land a billion years ago, some established a niche as modern fashion when he isolated penicillin shy kid with a crippling stutter who Earth’s great decomposers — key to the from the Penicillium rubens mold in 1929. dreamed of becoming a trailblazing creation of soil. Their mycelia exude Fungi can also parasitize and kill insects, scientist. “We lived in a big house with a e c r enzymes and acids that turn rock into including those troublesome to us. lab in the basement,” he recalls, “and I u o

e S biologically accessible minerals and For millennia, humans have exploited looked up every experiment I could find.” c

ien unravel the long-chain molecules of microfungi (molds and yeasts) to create He nearly blew the place up on several Sc / organic matter into digestible form. Fungal edibles such as cheese, bread, beer and occasions while tinkering with chemicals. NRI

; C mycelia hold soil together, help it retain wine. But in Western culture, Stamets Then, when he was 12, his father’s

METS water and make its nutrients available to observes, the powers of macrofungi have business failed and the family splintered. A

L ST vegetation. Species known as mycorrhizal been largely ignored, an attitude he refers Stamets’ mother decamped with him and

; PAU fungi use their mycelia to envelop or to as “mycophobia” or “biological racism.” his twin brother to a small apartment in penetrate plant roots, contributing Mushrooms were relegated to the Camp- Columbiana, Ohio, where they lived in RT ISETT nitrogen compounds and mineral salts in bell’s can, or outlawed when they blew too poverty. Eventually, she moved with the UA exchange for sugars from the host many minds. They were discounted, boys to her own parents’ vacation home ges; ST a organism. (When a sapling is languishing devalued, shunted aside. near Seattle and sent them on scholarship m in the shade of a larger tree, these fungi can Just as Paul Stamets was, before he to a boarding school in Pennsylvania. etty I G sense the problem and send the youngster found his own mycelial path. Stamets felt like a misfit among preppies. extra nourishment.) Mushroom-producing He threw himself into martial arts (later fungi feed animals; animals return the THE MYCELIAL PATH earning black belts in both tae kwon do favor by spreading fungal spores. To understand how Stamets came to and hwa rang do) and identified with the To ward off pathogens, fungi have believe mushrooms could save the world, it counterculture that was reaching its crest. developed an arsenal of antibacterial and helps to know how they saved Stamets. During his senior year, Stamets and his antiviral compounds — a resource that He was born in 1955 in Salem, Ohio, one brother were expelled for selling marijuana traditional peoples harnessed in the form of four brothers. His father, an engineer, to fellow students. They hitchhiked back to kwise from bottom De left: Agostini/

c of mushroom teas and foodstuffs. Alexan- owned a firm that oversaw construction Seattle, where they finished high school at a

Clo der Fleming exploited them in more projects for the U.S. Army. Stamets was a public institution. Stamets spent a summer

41 07/08.2013 © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com Against a backdrop of evergreens in Shelton, Wash., Fungi Perfecti supplies mushrooms to a growing market.

toiling as a sawmill hand before enrolling “Fine, thanks,” he answered, with an dent study. An environmental chemist at Kenyon College in Ohio. But he still felt ease that astonished him. “And you?” named Michael Beug offered a course on out of place and spent hours wandering in From that moment, Stamets’ tongue mushrooms, and Stamets badgered him the woods off campus. began to come untied, and he devoted into becoming his adviser. “I’ve never had a That’s where he headed the day he tried himself to learning about the fungi that he student who was more driven,” says Beug, hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms for credited with the change. With the help of who intensified his mycology research to the first time. He climbed a tree, but was a mushroom-identification book, he found keep up with Stamets. (Beug also secured a too intoxicated to climb down. Soon a psilocybes growing wherever he looked, license from the Drug Enforcement thunderstorm blew in, and he was lashed and he began to probe the mysteries of Administration allowing him and his by rain and wind. As lightning struck other species as well. students to work with psilocybin mush- nearby, he realized he could die at any The following summer, he dropped out rooms.) Stamets learned to run the school’s moment, yet the scene was overwhelm- and took a logging job. But the more scanning electron microscope — a rarity in ingly beautiful. He felt part of the forest fascinated he became with mushrooms the 1970s — and was soon photographing and the universe as never before. He (hallucinogenic and otherwise), the worse the cell structures of mushrooms, mycelia reflected on his life and how to change it. he felt about helping to destroy their and spores for scientists nationwide. “Stop stuttering now, Paul,” he told himself, habitat. After three crew buddies were By the time he graduated in 1979, repeating the phrase like a mantra. killed in logging-related accidents, Stamets Stamets had been tutored by some of When the weather calmed, he climbed decided to try school again, this time at America’s leading academic mycologists. down and hiked home. On his street, he ran Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. He was an accomplished field scientist, into a neighbor whose attractiveness had He wanted to become a mycologist. laboratory researcher and taxonomist. He always intensified his stammer. “Hi,” she Evergreen didn’t have a mycology had discovered several new Psilocybe said. “How are you today?” department, but it encouraged indepen- species and published a book on the genus. He was an expert cultivator, too. Yet grad school seemed economically out of reach. Stamets had recently married a woman THE Man Who Mistook His Mushroom for a Hat with three kids of her own, and the couple’s first child was on the way. To support his Although he’s obsessed with finding new uses family, he remained at Evergreen as an for mushrooms, Stamets is also a passionate adjunct professor and started a business scholar of ancient mycotechnology. He often wears one example: a traditional Transylva- with a research arm on the side. nian hat made of amadou, the spongy inner Fungi Perfecti’s first lab and grow room layer of horse’s hoof fungus (Fomes occupied the basement of Stamets’ rented fomentarius), which can be processed into a house. He began selling exotic culinary warm, feltlike fabric. Highly flammable, mushrooms and holding seminars for the amadou has also served as tinder for flintlock guns and prehistoric campfires. (Ötzi, the paying public. Then, after a 1983 trip to 5,000-year-old “ice man” found in an Alpine China with two of his mentors (mycologist glacier, was carrying the stuff in his pouch.) Gary Lincoff and physician Andrew Weil, Its absorbent and antimicrobial properties on his way to fame as a natural-health made it ideal for dressing wounds and guru), Stamets became one of the first U.S. preserving foods. And amadou was the first medicinal mushroom on record: “Hippocrates cultivators to branch into Asian medicinal described it in 450 B.C. as an anti-inflamma- varieties. Later that year, he published The tory,” Stamets notes. — KM Mushroom Cultivator, a book still widely

42 DISCOVER © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com considered essential for home and commercial growers. In 1984 Stamets dove into his business full time. Aided by loans from relatives, he bought a 20-acre farm on Kamilche Point, a few miles northwest of Olympia. And it was there where he began to discover the macrofungi’s planet-changing powers.

THE FUNGI PERFECTI FARM Stamets’ land came with a sagging farmhouse, a half-dozen cows and 400 feet of waterfront overlooking Skookum Inlet off the Puget Sound. Soon after he moved in, the sheriff rang his doorbell. “I thought, that was quick, I haven’t had a chance to do anything illegal yet,” he recalls. The officer informed Stamets that E. coli from sewage runoff was contaminating the local oyster beds, and served him with a court order requiring landowners to install updated septic systems in two years. Stamets couldn’t afford a new system. But he had suspected that mushroom mycelium could function as a natural filter the first time he saw its microscopic structure. In college, he confirmed his theory by testing the mycelia of various common species for absorbency; they all beat cotton hands down. He also knew that mycelia exude antibacterial compounds. So he decided to conduct a Garden Giant mushroom: Mycelial wastewater filtration system and culinary delight. (literal) field test. A marshy depression called a swale bacteria as an eco-friendlier alternative to Stamets suggested they try oyster followed the gentle slope of Stamets’ the conventional way of cleaning up such mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), an property, running downhill for 800 feet contamination — which was to truck the aggressive white-rotter that could grow and ending just above the inlet. At the top affected soil to a landfill and replace it with practically anywhere. He sent them some of the swale, he dumped several truck- clean dirt. But bacteria can have trouble oyster mushroom spawn. The technicians loads of wood chips, which he covered breaking down petroleum’s largest covered it with oil, most of which was with mycelium-infused growing medium molecules, and they’re finicky about consumed within three weeks; mush- — known to cultivators as spawn. Within ambient temperature and oxygen levels. rooms were popping up through the muck. weeks, mycelia had fully enmeshed the A few researchers had begun experi- But Enviros went bankrupt before the bed. By summer, Stamets had his first menting with fungi instead. It had long work could proceed further. harvest of tasty Garden Giant (Stropharia been known that mold and mushroom Meanwhile, Stamets began installing rugosoannulata) mushrooms. A year after species called “white rot” fungi could eat experimental mycelial wastewater the planting, when water quality inspec- the lignin in wood, using enzymes to filtration systems for other farmers tors checked his runoff, they found his convert its complex hydrocarbons into (eventually with funding from the county septic system was no longer a source of nutritious carbohydrates. Molds also and the state), improving on his initial pollution; fecal bacteria levels measured a sometimes colonize fuel tanks, where they design by encasing Stropharia spawn and hundred times less. use those same enzymes to consume wood chips in burlap sacks and packing Technicians from a Seattle-based petroleum products. In the lab, a white-rot them into ditches placed to catch bioremediation company, Enviros, learned mold called Phanerochaete chrysoporium maximum runoff. He began touting the of Stamets’ success and asked him for had shown particular thoroughness at method in environmental journals, and in advice on using fungi to clean up oil- digesting oil, but it often failed to perform 1996 he was approached by Pacific soaked soil. At the time, many experts under outdoor conditions. The Enviros Northwest National Laboratory, operated were betting on hydrocarbon-eating staff hoped to find a hardier fungus, and by the Battelle Memorial Institute, known

43 07/08.2013 © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com Petroleum-eating oyster mushrooms resembling those above can remediate soil contaminated by oil spills.

for technological solutions to energy and Stamets’ team added layers of myceliated mycoforestry and mycopesticides (most of environmental issues. Although initial wood chips to one pile and covered it with a which are terms he coined). He began interest was in Stamets’ wastewater work, shade cloth. Two of the piles were treated amassing a genetic library of hundreds of excitement grew when he mentioned his only with bacterial cultures or chemical mushroom strains — gathered on hikes foray into oil-spill remediation. fertilizers. One pile was left as a control. through the old-growth forests of the Stamets and the Battelle team began Four weeks later, the myceliated sample Northwest and on trips to Europe, Asia, lab work to maximize the mushroom’s was light brown, sweet-smelling and South America and Australia — that could petroleum-eating efficacy. From his bursting with mushrooms — some more be used for environmental as well as research on psilocybes, he knew that than 12 inches in diameter. Insects came to medicinal healing. different strains of a single mushroom eat the fungi, and their larvae attracted The EPA asked Stamets to help the species can have wildly varying levels of birds, which likely deposited seeds. After Coast Guard find ways to clean up chemical activity. So the team grew a few nine weeks, the pile was covered with waterborne oil spills. In response, he dozen strains of oyster mushroom, flourishing plants. Aromatic hydrocarbons invented the mycoboom, a burlap tube testing each for oil-digesting ability in had dropped to less than 200 ppm, suitable filled with oyster mushrooms designed to petri dishes in the lab. for freeway landscaping. break down petroleum while floating on a The strains that consumed oil fastest “The other piles,” Stamets recalls, slick or barricading a beach. Battelle were selected for further trials, and in “remained dead, dark and stinky.” researchers tested his fungal strains 1998, the team used the top performers in The mushrooms had won. against neurotoxins and found one an experiment sponsored by the Washing- potent variety of psilocybin mushroom ton State Department of Transportation at HOW MUSHROOMS highly effective at breaking down VX a maintenance yard in Bellingham. Soil at CAN SAVE THE WORLD nerve gas. Stamets collaborated with the the site was contaminated with diesel fuel By then, Stamets was obsessed with the Washington State Department of Natural at up to 20,000 parts per million, similar to possibilities of what he called “mycoresto- Resources on another successful field concentrations on Alaskan beaches after ration,” a nascent field encompassing his experiment, planting mushrooms on old the Exxon Valdez oil spill. That spring, own and other researchers’ work in logging roads to prevent silt and pollut- WSDOT scooped out four piles of dirt. mycofiltration, mycoremediation, ants from clogging streams. He improved

44 DISCOVER © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com BOTTOM RIGHT: PAUL STAMETS some cases, a tiny mushroom pops pops mushroom atiny cases, some (In process. the in them killing spores, their with insects infect could species mold afew that He knew fungi. from for one derived looking he began ingly, unsurpris humans; to nontoxic was that of it. care take to promised years, problemfor the ignored had who Stamets, joists. floor the crumbling was that fungus awhite-rot by ironically, —attracted, ants carpenter with infested was farmhouse old Stamets’ that find to dismayed was she Yao in, moved later.) When years four ing, Weil officiat Andrew with married, were and Yao (Stamets apart. fell marriage first his after 1997 in began Yao, which “Dusty” Carolyn practitioner medicine herbal with relationship out of his grew environment own on Stamets’ impact immediate manufacture. its in used trees the replace to planted and apart torn be could box the for example), online, bought shoes (for use shipping After fungi. symbiotic and seeds tree with nated impreg carton acardboard Box, Life the invented He spores. mushroom puffball of slurry a into seedlings fir Douglas he dipped another, in mushrooms; oyster elm with together broccoli planted he one case In soil. to fungi mycorrhizal adding by woodlands in reforestation up sped and on farms yields crop Perfecti. At right, mycorestoration project coordinator Katie Brownson works intheproduction facilities. Growing room manager JustinTulloss inspects Lion’s Manemushrooms (Hericium erinaceus)at Fungi © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. Thismaterial maynot bereproduced in anyform withoutpermission from thepublisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com He wanted to use a natural pesticide pesticide anatural use to He wanted greatest the with invention But the - - - breeding a mutant strain generations, more many it over cultured and material white of some the took then He production. spore its in gene) lagging was adamaged due to (perhaps mycelium the where dish, one in green the amid emerged stripes white Eventually, generations. several for reproduced they where dishes, other mold to of the bits He transferred spores. green with covered soon it was tion; of inocula point the from dish petri the over spread of mycelium circle awhite lab, return. in them consume would mycelium the it, ate they Once of nutrition. source Metarhizium to attracted be might insects the he thought, form, sporulating pre- its In nest. the it into carried had ants the until hold off to nonstop, spores produces normally which fungus, the train to was idea His directly. on them sprayed are spores its when ants carpenter and anisopliae of Metarhizium foraway asample nest. the entering from them carrying workers stop and spores the smell could which insects, social against poorly worked mycopesticides Yet existing skull.) corpse’s the through When Stamets cultured the mold in his his mold in the cultured Stamets When He sent achallenge. smelled Stamets mold, known to kill termites termites kill to known mold, as a as - variety of bugs. In 2003, Stamets patented patented Stamets 2003, In of bugs. variety awide exterminate then and attract to bassiana Beauvaria of away. others warned moldy bodies of their smell the hypothesized, Stamets died, insects the After on. then from way that remained and ant-free, was house the Two later, weeks walls. the inside back rice of myceliated grains carrying were which ants, with swarming was dish The this!” see You’ve up! “Wake got to yelling, bedroom his to ran she night, floor.That kitchen it on the placed and LaDena, daughter, age then-teen his to belonging dish dollhouse on a spawn of the he put ateaspoon ready, it was When on rice. mycelium delayed or longer. for days delayed was of Perfecti farm andsold aspart of its growing kits. Mushroom cultures are propagated at theFungi M. anisopliae M. Metarhizium Further testing showed that other strains strains other that showed testing Further developmentally his grew Stamets the petri dish at left anddisguised asfood. of green Metarhizium Ants succumbto thepesticide power whose sporulation cycle cycle sporulation whose and another mold, mold, another and , could also be modified modified be also , could fungus, grown in 07/08.2013 -

45 rooms are known to contain a host of proven disease-fighting chemicals, including polysaccharides, glycoproteins, ergosterols and triterpenoids, as well as antimicrobial and antiviral compounds, all varying according to species and strain. Indeed, a handful of pharmaceuti- cal medications are derived from mushrooms, including the antibiotics ganomycin (from reishi mushrooms) and camp- estrin (from meadow mushrooms) and the chemotherapy drugs calvacin (from giant puffballs) and Illudin S (from the glow-in- the-dark jack-o’-lantern mushrooms). Stamets is working aggressively to add to that list, and over the past decade, he has initiated or consulted on a dozen laboratory and clinical trials aimed at deriving novel mushroom-based drugs. After the 9/11 attacks, for example, he sent hundreds of samples to the federal Bioshield program, whose mission is to Reishi mushrooms are used to produce the antibiotic ganomycin. develop defenses against biological weapons. Several of his proprietary strains his method and licensed it to a company of Agarikon (Fomitopsis officinalis) showed that planned to bring it to market. strong activity against H1N1 swine flu and He used the proceeds to tear down his H5N1 bird flu, as well as viruses in the decaying house and build a new one, with smallpox family. Stamets furnished cedar walls, a soaring roofline and a capsules of freeze-dried fungus for a geothermal heating system. A stained-glass seven-year, NIH-funded study by Bastyr window dominates the living room, University and the University of Minne- depicting the cosmos entwined with a sota to determine whether turkey tail mycelium-like network of dark matter. mushrooms could help breast cancer patients whose immune systems had been MUSHROOMS FOR HEALTH compromised by radiation therapy. Last Across the meadow from Stamets’ home year, the researchers announced that sits a cluster of hangar-size white metal natural-killer cell activity, CD8 T-cell sheds and Quonset huts: Fungi Perfecti’s counts and other immune functions offices, labs and grow rooms. Inside, improved significantly with the treatment. workers tend to fruiting maitake mush- Stamets’ mother, by coincidence, was rooms for medicinal teas, stuff plastic bags diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast with oyster mushroom spawn for home- cancer in 2009, at age 83. Although she growing kits, or propagate fungal cultures was ineligible for the trial, he put her on in clean rooms equipped with airlocks and turkey tail capsules to supplement her laminar-flow benches. These days, however, conventional chemotherapy drugs, Taxol the company’s fastest-growing product line and Herceptin. After six months, Patricia (co-created by Yao, now his partner in Stamets’ tumor disappeared, and today virtually all enterprises) is a line of she remains cancer-free. Though a single nutraceutical mushroom extracts, sold anecdote falls far short of proof, the deeply through another facility a few miles away. religious woman credits prayer as well as According to FDA regulations, a mushrooms for her return to health. nutraceutical manufacturer can’t claim its products are able to treat any particular RENEWING A NUCLEAR FOREST illness. So Fungi Perfecti markets its Divine intervention notwithstanding, Lion’s Mane mushrooms might be useful for tinctures as general immune-system progress toward Stamets’ mycotechnologi- regenerating nerves and treating Alzheimer’s. boosters and antioxidants. But mush- cal promised land has been slow. His

Stamets is researching a wide variety of ways in which fungi could help solve human problems. Here is a partial list: Environmental cleanup Mushrooms could be used to break down petrochemicals or absorb radiation from contaminated soil and water. Wastewater filtration Mushroom mycelia Turkey tail mushrooms: Stamets sent these to his mother when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. could cleanse runoff from storm drains, farms or logging roads. They could be used to filter out the nitrates, endocrine disrupters and pharmaceuti- medical research has yet to produce a Replant native trees along with mycorrhi- cal residues that disrupt ecosystems and damage marketable drug. His mycopesticides are zal fungi, which will help the trees grow human health. held up in product development. His while drawing radioactive material from Pesticides Fungal bug-killers could be used to mycorenewal ideas still haven’t been the soil. Harvest the mushrooms as soon target troublesome species while remaining applied on a large-scale basis. When he as they form, and dispose of them as nontoxic to others. proposed using mycobooms to battle the nuclear waste. Repeat as necessary for Medicines Mushrooms could provide new 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, officials several decades or even centuries until the antibiotic, antiviral and immune-boosting never even responded. Geiger counters stop screaming. The compounds and even chemotherapies. Yet momentum may be building. Last alternative, he pointed out, was to cart Forestry Planting symbiotic mushroom species year, the EPA awarded Stamets $80,000 to away millions of tons of soil and bury it as could speed reforestation in clear-cut woodlands. design a mycofiltration system for nuclear waste, taking up far more landfill Agriculture Adding mycorrhizal fungi to soil managing storm water runoff. A global space and depriving Japan of some of its could improve crop yields without the need for environmental consulting firm, New- best farmland and forestland forever. toxic chemical fertilizers. Fields, has adapted some of the techniques The blog post went viral, although even Famine relief Mushrooms could be grown Stamets pioneered to remediate polluted many hardcore mycophiles assumed the rapidly in refugee camps and disaster zones, using soil. In Ecuador, the nonprofit Amazon plan was hypothetical. Eric Rasmussen, just wood chips or saltwater-soaked straw. Mycorenewal Project, run by an alumna of however, believed it was worth a try. The Biofuels Growing mushrooms for biodiesel could Stamets’ seminars, plans to use mushrooms veteran disaster-relief coordinator had require far less soil and other resources than to clean up oil waste left by drillers. In New met Stamets nearly a decade earlier at a commonly cultivated fuel crops. York, another nonprofit is experimenting conference Rasmussen organized on Space travel Because of their usefulness in soil with mycobooms to help cleanse the environmental issues in refugee camps. creation, and the tolerance of many species for Newtown Creek toxic-waste Superfund site. “Paul had a lot of clever ideas that seemed radiation, mushrooms could be grown by interstellar In Grafton, Mass., renowned environmental both benign and effective, which is a rare voyagers and used to terraform other worlds. — KM engineer John Todd is using a Stamets- combination,” Rasmussen recalls. The two Agarikon designed mycofilter to scrub petrochemi- became close friends. (Fomitopsis cals from an old mill canal. Last year, aiming to make the Nuclear officinalus) And then there’s Stamets’ plan to Forest Recovery Zone a reality, Stamets mushrooms

) could protect 4 redeem the devastated landscape around partnered with Battelle researchers at the against bird flu, swine flu METS ( Fukushima. Shortly after the 2011 Energy Department’s former nuclear A and smallpox.

L ST tsunami-driven meltdown, he posted an production facility in Hanford, Wash., to online manifesto called “The Nuclear test various mushroom species for their Forest Recovery Zone,” which was ability to take up cesium. Results are predicated on a little-known fact about expected within the next few months. RT ISETT (2); PAU

UA mushrooms: Many species are able to Stamets, as usual, is optimistic. “I know : ST remove and absorb heavy metals, includ- some of my hypotheses sound rather ing radioactive isotopes, from soil. extraordinary,” he says. “I may be a little Slimy Stamets’ proposal was simple. First, weird, but I’d rather be weird and right spike-cap mushrooms fence off the contaminated area around than normal and wrong.” (Gomphidius the reactors. Then chip the wood debris glutinosus) can uptake

KWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT Kenneth Miller is a Los Angeles freelance writer

C from ruined buildings and trees, and who contributes frequently to DISCOVER. radioactive LO

C spread it over the area to make substrate. cesium-137.

See more pictures from the mushroom farm at www.DiscoverMagazine.com/Mushrooms 47 07/08.2013 © 2013 DISCOVER magazine. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.DiscoverMagazine.com