 |
| Fungi |
What is fungi?
If you have experienced a alive plants in the woods or green algae on a lake, you have see fungi at work. Now, researchers are just beginning to grasp the important part that these worldwide organisms play in carbon sequestration, thanks in part to a couple of breakthrough research in 2021.Scientists already have information about that 300 million years ago, white-rot fungi evolved the unique ability to digest lignin. That’s the natural, tough polymer in the cell walls of trees, creating them rigid and woody. This fungal super-skill of digestion ended the Carboniferous time by decomposing woody debris that would have fossilized into coal. But no one a actually know what happened to the carbon inside the lignin.
Scientists had long thought it easily evaporated into the atmosphere. But that didn’t sit correct with Davinia Salvachúa RodrÃguez, a microbiologist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. After 10 years of studying white-rot fungi, she demonstrated that it consume the carbon in lignin to fuel its growth. According to a March study in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). RodrÃguez’s study flags white-rot fungi as a key player in sequestering lignin-derived carbon in soil.
As same way, according to Stanford University microbiologist Anne Dekas published a study in June in PNAS showing that parasitic fungi that live on small algae in seas and lakes clear some of the carbon inside the algae, that might otherwise reenter the atmosphere.
Conventional wisdom had protected that whole of the carbon in the algae remained in a microbial feedback loop near the water’s surface, where microbes consumed the green plants and then released the Carbon dioxide. But Dekas and her groups proved instead that the fungi siphon off up to 20 percentage of the algae’s carbon. Then -because the fungi outsize the microbes in the feedback loop -the fungi become a more likely meal for larger species, which clear them from the loop. As the carbon creates its way up the food chain, it may eventually sink to the ocean floor, which also sequesters carbon, when the top species dies.
Dekas said that- A lot of aquatic microbiologists don’t have fungus on their minds at all. If you really want to understand the whole method or process, you have got to contain fungi.
Industrial important fungi and products
There are many important fungi and their products-A) Ganoderma:
 |
| Ganoderma |
It is a genus of polypore mushrooms which grow on wood, and include about 80 species, many from tropical regions. Because of their extensive use in traditional Asian medicines, and their potential in bioremediation, they are a very important genus economically.
Ganoderma can be differentiated from other polypores because they have a double walled basidiopore. They are popularly referred to as shelf mushrooms or bracket fungi.
Ganoderma are characterized by basidiocarps that ate large, perennial, woody brackets also called "conks".They are lignicolous and leathery either with or without a stem.
The fruit bodies typically grow in a fan-like or hoof-like form on the trunks of living or dead trees. They have double-walled, truncate spores with yellow to brown ornamented inner layers.
Ganoderma Lucidium, also known as Lingizhi (Chinese) or Reishi (Japanese) is a type of mushrooms that has been used for thousands of years throughout Asia, for its beneficial effects on our ability to maintain or improve health.
Moreover, G, lucidium contains the largest of cellulose-, lining, and xylan- digesting enzymes, which are being used in biomass remediation and industrial sludge processing.
Products: Ganoderma Tablets
Several species of Ganoderma conatin many bioactive compounds (~400) ,such as triterpenoids and polysaccharides. Since the commercial use of this mushroom in tablet form, it is now used by over 4 million people world wide.
Collectively, the Ganoderma species are being investigated for a variety of potential therapeutic benefits:
1) Anticancer effects.
2) Immunoregulatory effects.
3) Antioxidant activities.
4) Liver-protecting effects.
5) Hypoglycemic effects.
6) Antibacterial effects.
7) Antiviral effects.
8) Antifungal effects.
9) Reducing blood chlolesterol.
B) Aspergillus:
 |
| Aspergillus |
A. Niger is a fungus and one of the most common species of the genus Aspergillus. It causes a disease called black mold on certain fruits and vegetables such as grapes, onions, and peanuts, and is a common contaminant of food. It is ubiquitous in its occurance.
A. Nigeria is cultured for the industrial production of many substances. Various strains of A.niger are used in the industrial preparation of citric acid and gluconic acid and have been assessed as acceptable for daily intake by the World Health Organization.
Product: Citric acid
1) The dominant use of citric acid is as a flavoring and preservative agent in food and beverages, especially soft drinks.
2) Citrate salts of various metals are used to deliver those minerals in a biologically available form in many dietary supplements.
3) The buffering properties of citrates are used to control pH in household cleaners, pharmaceuticals and as a adjusting agent in creams and gels of all kinds.
4) Citric acid can be added to ice cream as an emulsifying agent to keep fats from separating, to caramel to prevent sucrose crystallization, or to recipes in place of fresh lemon juice.
5) Citric acid is used with sodium bicarbonate in a wide range of effervescent formulate, both for ingestion (e.g.powder and tablets) and for personal care (e.g., bath salts and cleaning of grease).
6) Citric acid is also often used in cleaning products and sodas or fizzy drinks.
7) Citric acid sold in a dry powdered form is commonly sold in markets and groceries as "sour salt", due to its physical resemblance to table salt. It has use in culinary applications where an acid is needed for either it's chemical properties or for its lemony flavor.
8) Citric acid is an excellent chelating agent, binding metals. It is used to remove limescale from boilers and evaporators.
9) By chelating the metals in hard water, used to soften water, which makes it useful in soaps and laundry detergents.
10) Citric acid is used as one of the active ingredients in the production of antiviral tissues.
