When we bought an unused pasture in the hay-producing south end of this valley, my first thought for homebuilding was to try a strawbale home. But the plastering system for most strawbale building at the time was cement, which contributes about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The think tank Chatham House reports if cement production were a country, it would rank third after China and the U.S. based on 2023 emissions data. We chose to use a log-based home instead, with beetle-killed trees. A recent article in CNN Science shows how a Bozeman research team led by Chelsea Heveran, PhD, pictured above, explores fungal mycelia as scaffolding for “biomineralized engineered living materials.” Previous uses for ELMs include things like packaging, as replacement for our plastics-intensive lifestyles, and Northeastern University’s Avinash Manjula Basavanna holds a number of patents for useful manifestations of this type of technology. The Montana team’s explorations in biomineralization brings a structural possibility to the project, and offers possibilities for future low-emissions homebuilding material.
The Heveran Lab at MT State received a National Science Foundation research grant to carry out their work, and luckily, prepared their report prior to last month’s cancellation of 700 NSF grants in a move Neil deGrasse Tyson said would “make America weaker, dumber, and sicker.” The DOGE focus has been on grants that they claim are “wasteful DEI” funding, but also include research that could provide positive paths to a more sustainable future by lowering risks from climate chaos.
As Sy Montgomery noted about octopuses in her second book about those ‘remarkably bright creatures,” fungi also seem to be having their moment. Despite the entire kingdom being ignored in our system of environmental impact analyses, yeasts, molds, smuts, mushrooms and toadstools are ever more frequently newsworthy, or found in cinemas and bookstores. Merlin Sheldrake’s 2020 book Entangled Life has sold over a million copies. In these days when I can struggle to find positive news to share here, highlighting those who keep on keeping on with their curiosity about better ways forward brings me joy, like what we see on the faces below as people from the Heveran lab immerse themselves in the many magics of our living world.
