When I met with Ethan Viles, a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at Montana State University, the first thing he did was show me the blue oyster mushrooms that are presently growing in his bathroom. The mushrooms are sprouting from what looks like a foam block, but Viles explains that this is actually what happens when mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus that forms a network of fibers, grows in sawdust: “It stiffens the lignocellulose material, which is basically sawdust, because mycelium grows between each particle and scaffolds it together.”  

  This ability for fungi to act as structural support, or scaffolding, along with its ability to biomineralize, is exactly what Viles is studying in Dr. Chelsea Heveran’s lab on campus. Biomineralization is the process whereby living organisms produce minerals. The process that Viles uses to accomplish this is called microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation, in which the metabolisms of bacteria and fungi are leveraged to create minerals. When certain types of microbes or fungi are in the presence of urea and calcium, they will break down the urea, which raises the pH of the solution. This forms calcium carbonate, a stiff mineral, which hardens around sand particles to form a solid material.