You Can Clone a Mushroom!?

Yes. and you should be doing it.

There are many reasons why you may want to clone a mushroom, and why it can become an invaluable resource. Let's explore a few of the reasons why.

1. You can grow your own food or medicine. If you are out walking and find a edible mushroom you enjoy, you can take a tissue sample from the mushroom to clone on agar. This clone will grow out in the form of mycelium on your agar plate. With the mycelium, you are able to inoculate grain, and then bulk substrate to grow your own mushrooms.

2. You could be saving fungi from going extinct. By creating a clone, you are creating a culture that can be stored for years to come. As we lose more and more habitat, many fungi are finding their homes shrinking, or disapearing all together. Creating a culture allows you to preserve its genetics, thus allowing you to preserve mycodiversity. If a species of fungi ever became endangered or extinct, we would have samples of it. These samples could be used to repopulate the species.

3. You are creating incredibly important data. Cultures can be used for further research. Mycelium contains the genetic information of indivudal species. Preforming DNA extraction and sequencing the DNA of indivudual speciemens can provide alot of information on that species, including where it fits in the phylogenetic tree of life. Once you create a library of cultures, you can always go back to sequence a sample and compare it to other samples you obtain.

4. You get to see parts of the fungi's life cycle that is often unseen. It is wicked cool to be able to see the growth of mycelium. Some have different growth patterns, and your agar dish can end up being pretty interesting, even beautiful.

Interested in cloning your own mushrooms? Keep an eye out for my next post, detailing how to do it step by step.