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AlanYx 16 hours ago [-]
The claim in the article that saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer's yeast) naturally produced the deep blue color in the butterfly example is not actually true, although it's a gorgeous effect.
These are genetically engineered variants of brewer's yeast designed to produce pigments.
Forgeties79 15 hours ago [-]
Wow you weren’t kidding that’s a beautiful color
inigyou 15 hours ago [-]
You can buy this color for 3€/meter at any weekend fabric market.
AlanYx 14 hours ago [-]
You could, but getting it from pigments in a chitinous matrix produced by genetically engineered brewer's yeast is just a little bit cooler.
pessimizer 14 hours ago [-]
I think they're saying that's exactly what you're buying for 3€/yd.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
No, I'm saying if the color is the only part you want, you can get it more easily.
Forgeties79 7 hours ago [-]
Ok? I just think it’s neat.
bofadeez 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dustfinger 16 hours ago [-]
I wonder if there is a health hazard wearing this due to breathing in spores or toxins released into the air? Or perhaps there is a risk that the wearer will absorb harmful chemicals secreted by the mycelium via contact with the wearer's skin? Very interesting none the less. I have imagined humans making living clothes for a long time, so it is nice to see that idea materialize.
dylan604 14 hours ago [-]
"Following drying at 45 degrees, the material is not quite living and not quite dead, but instead in a "low-metabolic, dormant-like state", Li told Dezeen, meaning it is not actively growing."
Don't think spores will be an issue since it's not the mycelium's sex organ mushroom that you're thinking of
fluoridation 13 hours ago [-]
It depends on the species. Some fungi like molds do directly sporulate from the mycelium.
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
From TFA: "These are mixed in with the cordyceps militaris"
"Many authors consider C. militaris quite common, spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere,[6] and fruiting bodies appear in Europe from August to November."[0]
It seems telling that none of the photos show anyone wearing it.
Qem 14 hours ago [-]
> Or perhaps there is a risk that the wearer will absorb harmful chemicals secreted by the mycelium via contact with the wearer's skin?
Or just getting a bad itch.
ChrisMarshallNY 14 hours ago [-]
Some people are very allergic to mushrooms. I wonder if that would extend to this.
But it's pretty cool.
funkygibbon 15 hours ago [-]
I would buy one, but I don’t think I have mushroom in my wardrobe for it.
samudrijan 14 hours ago [-]
Soylent queen
9 hours ago [-]
juancn 16 hours ago [-]
How does it smell though?
dhosek 15 hours ago [-]
I didn’t think of the smell at all, I was wondering what the feel was like. There’s a certain level of comfort that’s expected from clothing that matters. There’s also the question of breathability. Is it going to trap sweat and smells like polyester clothing?
other_herbert 10 hours ago [-]
If you sweat in this though, would it grow from the moisture or get killed off by the salinity? either way could lead to new and unexpected failure modes for clothing
ComputerPerson 16 hours ago [-]
Most people associate mushrooms and fungi with the smell of their substrate; they commonly don't have a strong smell themselves
I doubt it has a smell stronger than the wearer
edit: this is a bad take, upon further research
AlanYx 14 hours ago [-]
The mushroom smell isn't from either the substrate or respiration. That distinct odor is 1-octen-3-ol. Biochemists call it "mushroom alcohol." It's caused by enzymatic breakdown of their cell walls, and it thought to be related to signalling.
I doubt it would be strongly present here. The article says the mycelium are close to dormant.
You can actually purchase mushroom alcohol commercially as a food additive.
_whiteCaps_ 16 hours ago [-]
Chanterelles smell great. I would wear something that smelled like that.
Pine mushrooms, not so much.
fluoridation 15 hours ago [-]
I've done cultures on agar agar and mycelium definitely does have a distinctive smell. To me it's reminiscent to the damp smell of a concrete basement, though less stale and unpleasant.
dylan604 14 hours ago [-]
probably smells like patchouli
londons_explore 13 hours ago [-]
I put a load of washing on, then ended up in hospital for a year.
On return, the contents of the washing machine were pretty much this.
asveikau 13 hours ago [-]
Sounds like quite an ordeal, hope things are going well now.
andai 15 hours ago [-]
Could they make a house out of this?
bastawhiz 15 hours ago [-]
It doesn't seem to have the rigidity to be structurally sound for construction.
dylan604 14 hours ago [-]
my tent material doesn't have rigidity to it either. if we change out the word "house", it could be an interesting material to play with for other types of shelter. it's supposed to be hydrophobic, but how hydrophobic? a light spritz or spilled drink or holds up in the rain?
Mr Stamets (both real AND fictional) must be proud as heck!
chrisjj 16 hours ago [-]
> nutrient solution is applied over a hole, along with a small patch of fresh fungus
So, not repair itself.
zshrdlu 2 hours ago [-]
Well you gotta recharge it of course, just not with a power cord.
dustfinger 16 hours ago [-]
To be fair it only claimed "near self-repairing".
cestith 16 hours ago [-]
One could think of it as mostly self-repairing with some outside encouragement.
soiltype 16 hours ago [-]
The headline is more ambitious, that's probably what they meant
chrisjj 15 hours ago [-]
Nope. "Dress made of living mycelium can renew and repair itself".
bastawhiz 14 hours ago [-]
Exactly. You can place a patch with some glue over a hole in fabric to achieve the same thing in a traditional garment. Iron-on repair patches are also similar.
It's one thing to say "get it wet and leave it in the sun". It's another thing to require identical replacement material and nutrient slurry (I don't know about you, but I think I can source fabric glue more easily than potato water).
andai 15 hours ago [-]
Does the fresh fungus need to be genetically identical? I read something about mycelial nuclei in high school and it was weird.
fluoridation 15 hours ago [-]
I guess they're just trying to get the networks to interlace, not to reconstitute into a single organism and be capable of nutrient exchange, so I don't think it matters if they're identical or not.
hercynium 14 hours ago [-]
Cordyceps, huh? An interesting choice! And ironically the subject of an article on Ars Technica that just dropped...
I'm guessing that the OP didn't know about the Ars article when they posted. Perhaps "serendipitously" would have been a better word?
sajithdilshan 15 hours ago [-]
This would turn into a mould infested nightmare
josefritzishere 16 hours ago [-]
Is there an adjective for something that's nifty but also gross?
sdellis 15 hours ago [-]
Blursed!
kibwen 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure it's any more objectively gross than normal textile materials. Imagine you lived in a hairless, furless world where nothing like wool was a thing, and then suddenly we discovered a weird fluffy mammal that extruded long fibers out of its flesh; the people of that world might call that gross, we'd just call it ordinary.
14 hours ago [-]
pvaldes 2 hours ago [-]
Past the 'look at me I'm lady gaga' honeymoon phase, being forced to store our clothes in a fridge will not help with our energy bills.
Or we could put an 'almost dormant' fungus inside our dark and warm drawers and closets, lying close to the other clothes and shoes for months and months. What could go wrong?.
LoganDark 15 hours ago [-]
Is there a possibility of the organisms escaping the material and infesting the environment? That's what I would worry about with mycelium.
bamboozled 13 hours ago [-]
Researchers in China have created a textile from living mycelium that is self-cleaning, near self-repairing and can be coloured or made UV protective through "plug-and-play" add-ons of different fungi or yeast.
near self-repairing
meindnoch 14 hours ago [-]
Pretty disgusting tbh.
onlypassingthru 13 hours ago [-]
Neat. Wearing some hibernating Cordyceps clothes seems like a good way to speedrun some life-imitates-art The Last of Us gain of function research.
These are genetically engineered variants of brewer's yeast designed to produce pigments.
Don't think spores will be an issue since it's not the mycelium's sex organ mushroom that you're thinking of
"Many authors consider C. militaris quite common, spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere,[6] and fruiting bodies appear in Europe from August to November."[0]
That sounds like a mushroom to me
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_militaris
Or just getting a bad itch.
But it's pretty cool.
I doubt it has a smell stronger than the wearer
edit: this is a bad take, upon further research
I doubt it would be strongly present here. The article says the mycelium are close to dormant.
You can actually purchase mushroom alcohol commercially as a food additive.
Pine mushrooms, not so much.
On return, the contents of the washing machine were pretty much this.
So, not repair itself.
It's one thing to say "get it wet and leave it in the sun". It's another thing to require identical replacement material and nutrient slurry (I don't know about you, but I think I can source fabric glue more easily than potato water).
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/parasitic-zombie-fun...
Or we could put an 'almost dormant' fungus inside our dark and warm drawers and closets, lying close to the other clothes and shoes for months and months. What could go wrong?.
near self-repairing