Welcome to Filaments! I’m Silvia Hüttner, and this is a limited-run newsletter which tells the stories of how fungi have been, are and will be changing the world. You’re getting it because you signed up at buttondown.email/filaments and you can unsubscribe at any time with the link at the bottom of this email.

By now it shouldn’t be surprising that filamentous fungi produce a lot of useful things. Their use as materials or food (mycoprotein) may not be soo widespread yet -though fungi-based yoga mats will soon be available, and there’s a new player in the fungi steak field - but there are products made with fungi that are literally all around us, and have been for almost a century. Enzymes, as described in the last episode, are one kind of these products. Acids, are another one.

So today, a story about acids from moulds, lemon shortages, and how it all led to the emergence of today’s biggest pharma companies.

Welcome to Filaments! I’m Silvia Hüttner, and this is a limited-run newsletter which tells the stories of how fungi have been, are and will be changing the world. You’re getting it because you signed up at buttondown.email/filaments and you can unsubscribe at any time with the link at the bottom of this email.

Welcome to Filaments! I’m Silvia Hüttner, and this is a limited-run newsletter which tells the stories of how fungi have been, are and will be changing the world. You’re getting it because you signed up at buttondown.email/filaments and you can unsubscribe at any time with the link at the bottom of this email.

In the last episode we discussed eating filamentous fungi, in this episode we will look into the possibilities of wearing fungi, building with fungi and even being buried in fungi.

Welcome to episode 2 of Filaments!

What if you could make a nutritious, protein-rich, meat-resembling product, in a matter of hours or days, with a fraction of the resources required to grow a cow? Let’s see how growing fungi could be a way for more efficient and possibly more sustainable food production. (Disclaimer: In 2019 and 2020 I was CTO of Mycorena, a start-up that works in exactly this area.)

EPISODE 2 - Eating moulds.

The story of Quorn and the future of food production

Hello! Thank you for subscribing to this limited run newsletter about the fascinating things fungi can do and how we can use them. My name is Silvia Hüttner, I'm a fungi enthusiast, a researcher specialised in fermentation and enzyme technology and I have a PhD in Industrial Biotechnology. I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, or just want to say hi. 🍄

EPISODE 1 - FUNGI?

Breathe in - breathe out.

Imagine you’re in a forest. The sun trickles through the dense canopy of tall trees above you. You’re surrounded by plants and animals - birds chirping, woodpeckers pecking, leaves rustling, insects crawling. But there is another inhabitant in the forest, neither plant nor animal. It permeates the soft and bouncy soil under your feet with long, thin filaments, entangled and growing in all directions, decomposing dead wood into nutrients, nurturing tree roots. Here and there you can see a trace of this inhabitant, in the form of a shiny hat atop a delicate stem, a thick white wedge growing from the side of a tree trunk, or a velvet blanket covering a decaying fruit. Welcome to the world of fungi.