Page 8 - IAV Digital Magazine #424

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Student Makes Chess Pieces Out of Fungi as Plastic Supplement
By Syndey O'Shaughnessy
In a lab on the sec- ond floor of the Center for Natural Sciences, Ithaca College senior Sam Donato, an environ- mental studies major, checks on his latest experiment. He opens an oven and carefully takes out three chess pieces and sets them on the black lab bench. These chess pieces seem ordinary, even with bits of straw stuck inside them.
Donato soon explains that these chess pieces are unlike their commer- cial counterparts because they are made from fungus instead of plastic.
“I focus on growing particular strains of fungus in a certain type of way in order to replace commer- cial products,specifi- cally plastics,” Donato said.
Most fungi produce mushrooms, which are the sexual fruit- ing body of fungus, and the fungi Donato works with, oyster mushrooms, are no different. However, Donato does not allow the organism to produce a mush- room for his research.
“I manipulate the organism’s life cycle
and essentially stop it growing at a point that I want to use it at,” Donato said. “I am working with the stage right before the actual fruiting of this mushroom. I work with what’s called mycelium, which is the intercel- lular network of information exchange that the fungus uses to prop- agate its body.”
To actually grow the chess pieces from fungus, he intro- duces mycelium spawn mixed with straw into 3–D print- ed chess molds. Because fungus does not have a par- ticular type of growth, it can grow in any shape, and Donato chose to cre- ate chess pieces.
Ryan Bouricius, lab manager of the 3–D printing lab and a
physics student, helped Donato develop the designs for the molds.
“We weren’t sure going in if the plas- tics that the printers use would have been suitable for growth, but it was something that was worth giving a shot,” Bouricius said. “So I helped him by taking a design of the chess piece and then altering that to make a 3–D–printed mold out of it.”
Donato said that after the fungus grows into the shape he desires, he extracts it from the mold, dehydrates it in an oven and is left with a fully functional chess piece.
“At the end, you have this hard and rigid chess piece, but instead of a plas-
tic that may have been based in petro- leum, it is fully biodegradable,” Donato said. “Though the organ- ism is no longer liv- ing, it’s still incredibly productive in terms of biodegrading and recycling itself into nature once dis- posed of.”
Donato said he became interested in studying fungus after reading about mush- rooms in class.
“I kept asking ques- tions and I was real- ly interested in what makes a mushroom ... and that brought me to the actual organism’s body itself — the myceli- um,” he said.
He’s been working with Jason Hamilton, Donato’s research professor and chair of the Department of
Environmental Studies and Sciences, for about three years. Hamilton said he was excited when Donato proposed this project.
“My first thought was and still is that it was a fantastic idea,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton said he believes Donato’s research is at the forefront of sustain- able fungal materials research.
“If this works, chess pieces are kind of irrelevant because it means that you can grow all sorts of small solid objects that people can then use for as long as they want and again, there’s no trash, and in some sense, there’s really no pol- lution in the process, either,” Hamilton
said.
Donato said he hopes that one day his research will contribute to the field of mycology, the study of fungi, and help decrease society’s reliance on plastics. He envi- sions a future where plastics are replaced, one–for–one, with fungus.
This is not yet a mainstream idea, but one company, Ecovative, is pursu- ing mycelial tech- nologies to create
sustainable prod- ucts, like shipping materials and home decor.
However, Donato believes that the cul- tural stigmas sur- rounding fungus and mushrooms will impact how quickly others adopt these ideas.
“I think that as we progress as a com- munity and a popu- lation, we need to start working to real- ize that human beings could create a relationship with fungus that could effectively help us answer a large num- ber of questions in terms of how do we turn around our unsustainable ways and continue to live on our earth with a mindset of longevi- ty,” Donato said.
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