Novel and Conventional Uses of Fungi in Products and Services

Conventionally, fungi have been featured heavily in the production of food and beverages, biofertilizers, biopesticides, industrial enzymes, and antibiotics. However, with the advent of novel technologies with high-throughput capabilities, there is a boon in fungal biotechnology. With the developments in molecular life sciences, these technologies have been facilitated by new integrated “omics” approaches, which include parallel use of metagenomics, meta-transcriptomics, meta-proteomics, and metabolomics. These technologies have concurred some of the usual challenges such as identification of mixed and unculturable strains, genetic variants, understanding complex pathways, and signaling processes in inter-species interactions, which in turn have had a major impact on conventional fungal biotechnology as well as exploring hitherto uncharted territories. For instance, identifying a small yet significant group of fungi with higher lipid content has the potential of using fungi in the biodiesel industry, and the metagenomic-based identification of fungal microbiomes may pave the way for more efficient bioinoculants in mushroom culture and biofertilizers. In addition to these developments, the new sequencing technologies have resulted in exploring unusual fungal niches including caves, cold and saline environments including glaciers, saline microbial mats, salt flats, and salterns. Due to the unique conditions and stresses of these environments, such explorations have led to the identification of novel fungal strains, enzymes and metabolites which can be beneficial in fungal biotechnology. While most of the developments of fungal biotechnology discussed in this chapter are focused on the fields of medicine, food and agriculture, and industrial biotechnology, the recent developments in the service-based environmental biotechnology, such as air purification of hydrophobic volatile compounds and fungal-based removal of synthetic dyes in aquatic environments, are also considered.