> the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and difficult to source starting substrates
This type of thing always amazes me about nature -- obviously all the ingredients necessary exist in the soil the mushroom is grown in!
Yet the best we can do to mimic nature is get some hard-to-acquire substrates. It's so interesting how, given enough time, the universe can produce a self-replicating organism that can do something with basic building blocks that we can't do with current technology...
(okay, maybe this is a bit romantic, but it's still fun to think about)
> all the ingredients necessary exist in the soil the mushroom is grown in
I can't speak for mushrooms, but for plants, the vast majority of the mass actually comes from carbon in the air (breathes in CO2, takes the carbon, breathes out O2) and obviously water.
>Generally, plants make their food using the sun's energy (photosynthesis), while animals eat, then internally digest, their food. Fungi do neither: their mycelium grows into or around the food source, secretes enzymes that digest the food externally, and the mycelium then absorbs the digested nutrients.
The mail innovation to come out of 4 billion years of natural selection are essentially just really really really good catalysists: enzymes. They've got an admirable specificity and efficiency. We dont have 4 billion years to figure out how to do it as well, but we've gotten not that terrible in just a few thousand!
This type of thing always amazes me about nature -- obviously all the ingredients necessary exist in the soil the mushroom is grown in!
Yet the best we can do to mimic nature is get some hard-to-acquire substrates. It's so interesting how, given enough time, the universe can produce a self-replicating organism that can do something with basic building blocks that we can't do with current technology...
(okay, maybe this is a bit romantic, but it's still fun to think about)