https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-biology/chapter/importance-of-fungi-in-human-life/
Simply put, without fungi we would not see the world as it is now. It would be covered in waste and food rot, overrun with pests and be tragically less biodiverse. The majority of grasses and trees have symbiotic relationships with fungi, providing sugars in return for water that only the fungi’s long hardy roots are able to tap into, without this complex unique relationship these plants would not have access to such vital life supplies. Humans started off as early foragers, we would have relied on mushrooms at many points in history as a reliable source of protein, fibre, selenium and potassium. With a more environmentally aware movement taking hold in the present and surely future, mushrooms are a fundamental part of meat substitutes for the wide array of deep flavours and textures the many different strains of mushroom prove. In baking and cheese, fungi actually serves a crucial role in its composition in forms like yeast and penicillium or agaricus campestris. Medicinally we have fungi to thank for Penicillin, accidentally discovered when a spore got into some petri dishes and killed and processed the bacteria within. They do this in their natural environments to kill the bacteria around them, thus the competition to food and water supplies. Alongside penicillin Cephalosporin are also isolated from fungi. Medicines like this treat all from infections to organ transplant rejections, steroid hormones and blood clotting medicines. It is also utilised for its uses in DNA technology experiments as they produce proteins in a manner like humans do, they are actually more similar in this way to humans than plant-life. As a simple eukaryotic organism, fungi have impacted the world so much and the world as we know it would be a drastically different landscape without it. I think this is an important point for me to research for this project, as I want to showcase the complex beauty and depth behind something people never even think about. I want to make work that will honour something so often overlooked or seen for its dirt and rot, for something lifesaving and fundamentally awe-worthy.
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Author24 year old student from Nottingham, United Kingdom. Archives
June 2020
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