Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2024 Dec;90:103217. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2024.103217. Epub 2024 Oct 24.
Fungal organisms hold vital roles in ecosystem processes. Despite their intricate entanglement with most life on earth and their powerful metabolic capacities, they remain under-represented in environmental biotechnology. The interest in applying fungal biotechnologies to different environments is growing, as light is shed on their versatile potential. A diversity of fungi can be harnessed to promote crop yield, remediate pollutants from terrestrial and aquatic environments, and mitigate climate change impacts. Current technological advancements, such as the increase in high-accuracy 'omics pipelines, provide improvement. However, it is emphasized that there are many knowledge gaps regarding applying fungal biotechnology at scale where other organisms are inherently present. Hence, there is a dire need to increase funding that enables in-depth studies on fungal processes, such as degradation capacities, metabolite production, and cross-kingdom interactions, that promote climate-smart biotechnologies.
真菌在生态系统过程中起着至关重要的作用。尽管它们与地球上大多数生命都有着错综复杂的联系，并且具有强大的代谢能力，但它们在环境生物技术中的代表性仍然不足。随着人们对真菌生物技术在不同环境中应用的兴趣日益增长，真菌生物技术的多功能潜力也逐渐显现出来。可以利用多种真菌来提高作物产量，修复陆地和水生环境中的污染物，并减轻气候变化的影响。当前的技术进步，如高通量“组学”管道的增加，提供了改进的机会。然而，需要强调的是，在其他生物固有的情况下，大规模应用真菌生物技术还存在许多知识空白。因此，迫切需要增加资金，以深入研究真菌的过程，如降解能力、代谢产物的产生以及促进气候智能型生物技术的跨领域相互作用。
