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Dress made of living mycelium can renew and repair itself
- chrisjj 3mo ago> nutrient solution is applied over a hole, along with a small patch of fresh fungus So, not repair itself.
- dustfinger 3mo agoTo be fair it only claimed "near self-repairing".
- andai 3mo agoDoes the fresh fungus need to be genetically identical? I read something about mycelial nuclei in high school and it was weird.
- fluoridation 3mo agoI guess they're just trying to get the networks to interlace, not to reconstitute into a single organism and be capable of nutrient exchange, so I don't think it matters if they're identical or not.
- bastawhiz 3mo agoExactly. You can place a patch with some glue over a hole in fabric to achieve the same thing in a traditional garment. Iron-on repair patches are also similar. It's one thing to say "get it wet and leave it in the sun". It's another thing to require identical replacement material and nutrient slurry (I don't know about you, but I think I can source fabric glue more easily than potato water).
- zshrdlu 3mo agoWell you gotta recharge it of course, just not with a power cord.
- josefritzishere 3mo agoIs there an adjective for something that's nifty but also gross?
- kibwen 3mo agoI'm not sure it's any more objectively gross than normal textile materials. Imagine you lived in a hairless, furless world where nothing like wool was a thing, and then suddenly we discovered a weird fluffy mammal that extruded long fibers out of its flesh; the people of that world might call that gross, we'd just call it ordinary.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- sdellis 3mo agoBlursed!
- juancn 3mo agoHow does it smell though?
- ComputerPerson 3mo agoMost people associate mushrooms and fungi with the smell of their substrate; they commonly don't have a strong smell themselves I doubt it has a smell stronger than the wearer edit: this is a bad take, upon further research
- _whiteCaps_ 3mo agoChanterelles smell great. I would wear something that smelled like that. Pine mushrooms, not so much.
- fluoridation 3mo agoI've done cultures on agar agar and mycelium definitely does have a distinctive smell. To me it's reminiscent to the damp smell of a concrete basement, though less stale and unpleasant.
- AlanYx 3mo agoThe mushroom smell isn't from either the substrate or respiration. That distinct odor is 1-octen-3-ol. Biochemists call it "mushroom alcohol." It's caused by enzymatic breakdown of their cell walls, and it thought to be related to signalling. I doubt it would be strongly present here. The article says the mycelium are close to dormant. You can actually purchase mushroom alcohol commercially as a food additive.
- dhosek 3mo agoI didn’t think of the smell at all, I was wondering what the feel was like. There’s a certain level of comfort that’s expected from clothing that matters. There’s also the question of breathability. Is it going to trap sweat and smells like polyester clothing?
- other_herbert 3mo ago
- AlanYx 3mo agoThe claim in the article that saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer's yeast) naturally produced the deep blue color in the butterfly example is not actually true, although it's a gorgeous effect. These are genetically engineered variants of brewer's yeast designed to produce pigments.
- Forgeties79 3mo agoWow you weren’t kidding that’s a beautiful color
- inigyou 3mo agoYou can buy this color for 3€/meter at any weekend fabric market.
- AlanYx 3mo agoYou could, but getting it from pigments in a chitinous matrix produced by genetically engineered brewer's yeast is just a little bit cooler.
- pessimizer 3mo agoI think they're saying that's exactly what you're buying for 3€/yd.
- inigyou 3mo agoNo, I'm saying if the color is the only part you want, you can get it more easily.
- bofadeez 3mo ago[flagged]
- Forgeties79 3mo agoOk? I just think it’s neat.
- dustfinger 3mo agoI wonder if there is a health hazard wearing this due to breathing in spores or toxins released into the air? Or perhaps there is a risk that the wearer will absorb harmful chemicals secreted by the mycelium via contact with the wearer's skin? Very interesting none the less. I have imagined humans making living clothes for a long time, so it is nice to see that idea materialize.
- svachalek 3mo agoIt seems telling that none of the photos show anyone wearing it.
- dylan604 3mo ago"Following drying at 45 degrees, the material is not quite living and not quite dead, but instead in a "low-metabolic, dormant-like state", Li told Dezeen, meaning it is not actively growing." Don't think spores will be an issue since it's not the mycelium's sex organ mushroom that you're thinking of
- fluoridation 3mo agoIt depends on the species. Some fungi like molds do directly sporulate from the mycelium.
- dylan604 3mo agoFrom TFA: "These are mixed in with the cordyceps militaris" "Many authors consider C. militaris quite common, spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere,[6] and fruiting bodies appear in Europe from August to November."[0] That sounds like a mushroom to me [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_militaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_militaris
- Qem 3mo ago> Or perhaps there is a risk that the wearer will absorb harmful chemicals secreted by the mycelium via contact with the wearer's skin? Or just getting a bad itch.
- andai 3mo agoCould they make a house out of this?
- bastawhiz 3mo agoIt doesn't seem to have the rigidity to be structurally sound for construction.
- dylan604 3mo agomy tent material doesn't have rigidity to it either. if we change out the word "house", it could be an interesting material to play with for other types of shelter. it's supposed to be hydrophobic, but how hydrophobic? a light spritz or spilled drink or holds up in the rain?
- DANmode 3mo agohttps://constructionindustrytoday.co.uk/2026/06/01/mykor-closes-4m-round-to-scale-mycelium-construction-materials/ https://constructionindustrytoday.co.uk/2026/06/01/mykor-clo...
- funkygibbon 3mo agoI would buy one, but I don’t think I have mushroom in my wardrobe for it.
- samudrijan 3mo agoSoylent queen
- LoganDark 3mo agoIs there a possibility of the organisms escaping the material and infesting the environment? That's what I would worry about with mycelium.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoThis would turn into a mould infested nightmare
- meindnoch 3mo agoPretty disgusting tbh.
- hercynium 3mo agoCordyceps, huh? An interesting choice! And ironically the subject of an article on Ars Technica that just dropped... https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/parasitic-zombie-fungus-thrives-in-mosses-too/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/parasitic-zombie-fun...
- kxjwidjwjdj 3mo agoHow is that ironic?
- hercynium 3mo agoI'm guessing that the OP didn't know about the Ars article when they posted. Perhaps "serendipitously" would have been a better word?
- kxjwidjwjdj 3mo agoMr Stamets (both real AND fictional) must be proud as heck!
- onlypassingthru 3mo agoNeat. Wearing some hibernating Cordyceps clothes seems like a good way to speedrun some life-imitates-art The Last of Us gain of function research.
- londons_explore 3mo agoI put a load of washing on, then ended up in hospital for a year. On return, the contents of the washing machine were pretty much this.
- asveikau 3mo agoSounds like quite an ordeal, hope things are going well now.
- bamboozled 3mo agoResearchers in China have created a textile from living mycelium that is self-cleaning, near self-repairing and can be coloured or made UV protective through "plug-and-play" add-ons of different fungi or yeast. near self-repairing
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 3mo agoPast the 'look at me I'm lady gaga' honeymoon phase, being forced to store our clothes in a fridge will not help with our energy bills. Or we could put an 'almost dormant' fungus inside our dark and warm drawers and closets, lying close to the other clothes and shoes for months and months. What could go wrong?.