Paul Stamets蘑菇拯救世界的6种方法

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http://dotsub.com/view/c561fd03-69e1-466a-9a99-770ceb3ba364
Paul Stamets蘑菇拯救世界的6种方法
我喜欢挑战，拯救地球也许就是一项好的挑战。 我们都知道现在地球陷入困境， 现在我们进入了6X—— 这个星球上的第6次大灭绝。 我常想知道是不是有一个生物联合组织—— 或者叫做“呃喔”—— （笑声）——每一个生物都有选举权， 我们是留在地球还是离开地球？ 我想选举现在就正在进行。
我要向你们展示6个真菌学方案， 利用真菌，这些方案以菌丝为基础。 菌丝深入土地， 把泥土抓在一起，非常牢固， 和他的净重比是30,000倍的力量。 它们是天然的大分子拆卸器——土地魔术师。 它们产生腐殖土横跨整个地球的陆地。 现在我们发现植物之间可以多向输送养分， 由菌丝中介—— 所以菌丝就是母亲， 向桤树、桦树 到铁杉、雪松和道格拉斯冷杉输送养料。
这是Dusty和我（在树林里）， 我们常说，这就像周日去教堂。 我爱古老的森林， 我是个爱国主义者，因为我们有古老的森林。 你们大多数都很熟悉波特比罗蘑菇吧。 坦率地说我面临很大的障碍。 当我对某些人提及蘑菇时， 他们立即想到波特比罗蘑菇或魔法蘑菇， 他们的目光呆滞，他们认为我有些疯狂。 所以我希望和大家一起永远刺破这个偏见。 当我们提及真菌的时候， 人们有莫名的非理性恐怖，我们把它叫做蘑菇恐惧症。
蘑菇生长的很快， 第21天，23天，25天。 蘑菇产生很强的抗生素。 实际上，我们与真菌的关系比其它任何部分的自然界更紧密。 2年前，20名真核微生物学家 发表了一篇论文，建立了后鞭毛生物—— 一个新的“域”，将动物界和真菌连在一起。 我们共有病原菌。 真菌不趋向于因滋生细菌而引发腐烂， 所以我们最好的抗生素来自真菌。 但这个蘑菇已经过了它的顶盛期， 在它们形成孢子后就腐烂了。 但是我要告诉你们腐烂蘑菇上的 微生物序列 对于森林的健康是至关重要的。 它们产生树种， 它们产生残片为菌丝提供养料。
我们在这看到蘑菇在长孢子菌， 然后孢子在长芽， 菌丝形成，向地下伸展。 每一立方英寸土地，这些细胞可以有8英里。 现在我的脚下就大约覆盖着300英里的菌丝。
Nick Read 和 Patrick Hickey的显微照片。 注意当菌丝生长时， 它占据领土，随后开始结网。 我从事电子扫描显微镜技术多年， 我有数千电子显微照片， 在我盯着菌丝看时， 我意识到它们是微孔膜结构。 我们呼出二氧化碳，菌丝也是这样。 它吸进氧气，就像我们一样。 但这些基本上是外在的胃和肺。 我向你们显示一种延长神经膜的概念。 在这些空腔中，这些微孔形成， 当它们融合土地时，它们吸收水分。 这些是小孔。 在这些小孔中，微生物群开始形成。 所以海绵土不仅能抵御侵蚀， 而且可以建立微生物宇宙， 引起其它生物的多样性。
90年代早期，我首次提出 菌丝是地球天然互联网。 你仔细看菌丝，它们有很多分支。 如果一个分支断裂，然后很快 由于交叉接点—— 互联网工程师可能把它们叫做热点—— 就会建立旁路途径输送养料和信息。 菌丝是有感知力的， 它知道你在那里。 当你穿过土地时， 它在你的脚步之后跳起来，努力抓住残片。 所以我相信计算机互联网的发明 是一个以前证明过的 生物学成功模式的必然结果。 地球为自己的利益发明了计算机互联网， 我们作为地球上的高等生物， 则努力合理分配资源以保护生物圈。
暗物质符合同一菌丝体原型， 我相信物质产生生命， 生命变为单细胞，单细胞变成串， 串变成链，链变成网。 这就是我们在整个宇宙中看到的变化。
你们大多数可能不知道真菌是出现在大地上的第一个生物。 它们是13亿年前出现的， 数亿年之后才有了植物。 这怎么可能？ 它是可能的，因为菌丝产生草酸 和许多其它的酸和酶， 风化岩石和攫取钙和其它矿物质 形成草酸钙。 使岩石崩裂，这是产生土壤的第一步。 草酸是两个二氧化碳分子结合在一起， 所以真菌和菌丝 以草酸钙的形式隔离二氧化碳。 所有其它草酸 也通过形成的矿物质 和从岩石基体中得到的矿物质隔离二氧化碳。
这最初是在1859年发现的。 这是Franz Hueber拍摄的照片。 这张照片50年代拍摄于沙特阿拉伯。 4亿2千万年前，这个生物就存在了， 叫做原杉藻属。 原杉藻属， 放倒了也有3英尺高。 在那个时候地球上最高的植物低于2英尺。 芝加哥大学的Boyce博士 去年在地质学杂志上发表了一篇文章 确定原杉藻属是一种巨大的真菌， 巨大的蘑菇。 当时地球上都布满了这种巨大的蘑菇 大部分土地上都有。 它们存在了数千万年。
那时我们已经有几次灭绝性事件。后来—— 6千5百万年前——你们大多数人都知道—— 我们有过一次小行星的撞击。 地球被小行星撞击， 大量碎片抛入大气层。 阳光被阻断，真菌遗留在地球上。 以真菌为伍的那些生物得到了好处， 因为真菌不需要光。 最近在爱因斯坦大学 刚刚确定真菌利用辐射作为能量来源， 很像植物利用光。 所以我认为真菌还存在于其它某些星球的展望 是一个必然的定局， 至少在我的脑海中。
世界上最大的生物体是在东俄勒冈地区。 我不能错过它。它的面积是2,200英亩， 2,200英亩,有2,000年的历史。 星球上最大的生物是菌丝团，有一个细胞壁厚。 一个生物体为何能如此之大， 能有一个细胞壁厚， 而我们有5-6个皮肤层保护我们？ 菌丝在适当条件下产生蘑菇—— 它以巨大的力量冲出，这股力量能够冲破柏油。 我们参与了几项实验。 我可以向你展示 拯球地球的6种方法。 巴特尔实验室和我一起在华盛顿贝灵汉， 我们有四堆用柴油和其它石油废液浸透的绒布。 一堆作为对照，一堆用酶处理， 一堆用细菌处理， 我们这一堆用蘑菇菌丝注射。 菌丝吸收油。 菌丝产生酶—— 过氧化物酶——其打破碳-氢键。 碳-氢键将碳氢化合物结合在一起。 菌丝被油浸透了， 6周后我们回来 所用的油布都被挪动了， 所有其它的绒布都死了，变黑而且很臭。 我们的绒布上覆盖了 数百磅的牡蛎蘑菇—— 颜色变浅。 是酶重新将碳氢化合物 变为碳水化合物——真菌糖。
有些蘑菇很幸福， 很大。 它们显示了它们能够获得多少养料。 但是也发生了某种事情，这是我一生中对事物真谛的顿悟。 它们形成孢子，孢子吸引昆虫， 昆虫产卵，卵变成幼虫。 然后鸟飞来了，带来了种子， 我们的绒布变成了生命的绿洲。 而其它三堆绒布死了，变黑变臭了， PAH——芳香族碳氢化合物—— 在8周的时间里从每百万10,000份减少至每百万200份。 最后我们没有想到—— 整个绒布是生命的绿色护堤。 这些是入关物种， 为其它生物群体打开大门的先锋物种。
所以我发明了用粗麻布——沙坑产卵—— 放入菌丝——用风暴吹来的碎片， 你把这些粗麻布放到农场的下游， 那里产生大肠杆菌，或其它的废物， 或放到有化学毒性的工厂， 它导致生态修复。 我们在华盛顿梅森县设了一个点， 我们看到大肠菌数量明显减少。 我在这给你们看一张图表。 这是一个对数标度，10的8次方。 每克有1亿以上的菌落， 10的3次方是1000。 在48-72小时内，这3个蘑菇物种 使大肠杆菌的数量减少了10000倍。 想一想它的影响。 这是一个空间保守的方法，用风暴垃圾—— 我们可以保证每年都有风暴。
随着时间的推移，这个蘑菇引起我们的特别兴趣。 这是我妻子Dusty 和一个叫做拟层孔菌属天门冬属的蘑菇——Agaricon。 它不是古老森林中的蘑菇， 第奥斯科理德在公元65世纪首次描述 它用于治疗肺结核。 这种蘑菇生长于华盛顿州、俄勒冈、 加州北部、英国哥伦比亚，现在认为欧洲已经灭绝了。 可能看起来没那么大， 让我们走近一些。 这是非常罕见的真菌。 我们的团队——我们有一个专家组 去年去了古老森林20次。 我们发现一例可以进行培养。
我认为保留古老森林里真菌的基因组 对于人类的健康非常重要。 我参与了美国国防部的生物防护工程。 我们呈递了300多种蘑菇样本，我们在热水中把它们煮了， 菌丝收获了细胞外代谢物。 几年前 我们得到了这些结果。 我们有3种不同的Agaricon蘑菇株， 它们抗疹病毒活性非常活跃。 Earl Kern博士是 美国国防部的天花专家，他说 任何选择性指数在2或2以上的化合物都是活跃的， 10以上是非常活跃。 我们的蘑菇系属于非常活跃。 你们可以读一读一篇经过审核的新闻发布稿—— 经美国国防部审核的， 你可以搜索谷歌的“羊肚菌栽培”和“天花”， 或者你可以上NPR.org听现场访谈。
受到这点的鼓励，我们转向流感病毒。 这是我第一次展示。 我们有3个不同的Agaricon蘑菇株 抗流感病毒活性非常高。 这是选择性指数数量—— 你看到10-20——抗流感病毒， 与三唑核苷对照相比， 我们的有极高的活性。 我们使用天然提取物， 其剂量与纯药物剂量相同。 我们试图让它抗流感病毒A——H1N1，H3N2—— 以及流感病毒B。 然后我们试着混合， 在混合液中，我们想让它抗H5N1, 我们得到了1000以上的选择性指数。
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然后我想我们可以展开讨论 我们是否应将拯救古老森林 作为国家国防事务。 （鼓掌）
我变得对昆虫病原真菌有兴趣—— 真菌杀死昆虫。 我们的房屋被木蚁毁了。 我上EPA主页，他们推荐他们的研究成果， 一组杀死木蚁和白蚁的 真菌绿僵菌属。 我做了别人没做过的事。 实际上在菌丝停止产生孢子时，我寻找菌丝。 这些是孢子——这是在孢子里。 我可以把菌丝培养为 非孢子形式。 这家农药企业在诱饵上投入1亿美元， 防止白蚁吞噬房子。 但昆虫并不傻， 它们可以在接近孢子的时候避开它， 所以我把菌丝培养为非孢子形式。 我用我女儿的芭比娃娃盘， 我把它放在白蚁群 每天出没的地方。 蚂蚁被菌丝吸引， 因为那没有孢子。 它们再把它带给蚁后， 一周后我的房子再也没有出现过木屑。
然后——晚餐和死亡之间微妙的舞蹈—— 菌丝被蚂蚁消耗， 变成木乃伊，发出声响，蘑菇从它们的头部突然冒出。 （笑声） 在孢子形成之后，孢子相斥。 所以房子就不再适合蚁群入侵了。 这样你有一个比较永久的办法对付白蚁的再次入侵。 我的房子毁了，但我收到 对付木蚁、白蚁和火蚁的第一个专利。 随后我们想提炼，你瞧， 我们可以控制昆虫向不同的方向。 这有很大的作用。 然后我得到了我的第二个专利——这是个大专利， 叫做亚历山大格雷厄姆贝尔专利—— 它涵盖20多万物种。 杀虫剂制造业的主管告诉我， 这是他们见过的 最具破坏性的技术。 它可能完全改变全球的杀虫剂制造业。 在这个概念伞下可以飞出100个博士生， 因为我推测是昆虫病原真菌 在芽孢形成前，吸引不同的昆虫， 否则它们会被那些孢子排斥。
所以我准备了一个生命盒，因为我需要一个供料系统。 生命盒——你会从TED得到一份DVD—— 你往里加土，加水， 你除了有孢子还有菌根真菌和植物内生真菌， 就像是Agaricon蘑菇。 种子由菌丝照料。 你把树种放在这里， 然后你完成了——潜在的—— 古老森林在一个纸板盒内的生长。
我想在全球重建这个供料系统 及使用纸板盒， 让它们变成生态足迹。 如果能建个像YouTube的网站， 你就能使它互动，有特殊的区域码—— 人们可以联合起来， 通过卫星成像系统、 通过虚拟地球或谷歌地球， 你可以确认碳排放信号 被生命盒里的树木隔离了。
你可以用装鞋的纸板盒， 你可以加水——我为社区难民开发了这个 —— 玉米、大豆、南瓜和洋葱。 我拿了几个盒子——我妻子说如果我能做，任何人都可以做—— 我完成了一个种子园。 然后你收获籽粒—— 谢谢你，Eric Rasmussen,谢谢你的帮助—— 然后你在这个种子园获得了丰收。 你还可以收获籽粒，然后你仅需要几粒籽粒—— 我给它加上菌丝，然后我给玉米接种。 3个玉米，没有其它的谷物—— 许多蘑菇开始形成。 碳供不应求， 这个特定产物就停止了。 但看看这里发生了什么， 收获了蘑菇， 但非常重要的是 菌丝将纤维素转变成真菌糖。 所以我想，我们如何应对我们国家的能源危机？ 我们发现了Econol。
纤维素利用菌丝作为介质产生乙醇—— 你得到了我向你们描述过的所有好处。 但从纤维素到乙醇从生态学看是愚昧的， 我认为我们需要生态智能 产生燃料。 所以我们在地球上建立了碳银行，更新土地 有新的物种我们需要合作。 我认为菌丝可有助于拯救世界。 非常感谢。
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Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world
I love a challenge, and saving the Earth is probably a good one. We all know the Earth is in trouble. We have now entered in the 6X -- the sixth major extinction on this planet. I often wondered if there was a United Organization of Organisms -- otherwise known as "Uh-Oh" -- (Laughter) -- and every organism had a right to vote, would we be voted on the planet or off the planet? I think that vote is occurring right now.

I want to present to you a suite of six mycological solutions, using fungi, and these solutions are based on mycelium. The mycelium infuses all landscapes, it holds soils together, it's extremely tenacious. This holds up to 30,000 times its mass. They're the grand molecular disassemblers of nature -- the soil magicians. They generate the humus soils across the land masses of Earth. We have now discovered that there is a multi-directional transfer of nutrients between plants, mitigated by the mcyelium -- so the mycelium is the mother that is giving nutrients from alder and birch trees to hemlocks, cedars and Douglas firs.

Dusty and I, we like to say, on Sunday this is where we go to church. I'm in love with the old-growth forest, and I'm a patriotic American because we have those. Most of you are familiar with portobello mushrooms. And frankly, I face a big obstacle. when I mention mushrooms to somebody, they immediately think portobellos or magic mushrooms, their eyes glaze over, and they think I'm a little crazy. So I hope to pierce that prejudice forever with this group. We call it mycophobia, the irrational fear of the unknown when it comes to fungi.

Mushrooms are very fast in their growth. Day 21, day 23, day 25. Mushrooms produce strong antibiotics. In fact, we're more closely related to fungi than we are to any other kingdom. A group of 20 eukaryotic microbiologists published a paper two years ago erecting opisthokonta -- a super-kingdom that joins animalia and fungi together. We share in common the same pathogens. Fungi don't like to rot from bacteria, and so our best antibiotics come from fungi. But here is a mushroom that's past its prime. After they sporulate, they do rot. But I propose to you that the sequence of microbes that occur on rotting mushrooms are essential for the health of the forest. They give rise to the trees, they create the debris fields that feed the mycelium.

And so we see a mushroom here sporulating. And the spores are germinating, and the mycelium forms and goes underground. In a single cubic inch of soil, there can be more than eight miles of these cells. My foot is covering approximately 300 miles of mycelium.

This is photo-micrographs from Nick Read and Patrick Hickey. And notice that as the mycelium grows, it conquers territory and then it begins the net. I've been a scanning electron microscopist for many years, I have thousands of electron micrographs, and when I'm staring at the mycelium I realize that they are microfiltration membranes. We exhale carbon dioxide, so does mycelium. It inhales oxygen, just like we do. But these are essentially externalized stomachs and lungs. And I present to you a concept that these are extended neurological membranes. And in these cavities, these microcavities form, and as they fuse soils, they absorb water. These are little wells. And inside these wells, then microbal communities begin to form. And so the spongy soil not only resists erosion, but sets up a microbial universe that gives rise to a plurality of other organisms.

I first proposed, in the early 1990s, that mycelium is Earth's natural Internet. When you look at the mycelium, they're highly branched. And if there's one branch that is broken, then very quickly, because of the nodes of crossing -- Internet engineers maybe call them hot points -- there's alternative pathways for channeling nutrients and information. The mycelium is sentient. It knows that you are there. When you walk across landscapes, it leaps up in the aftermath of your footsteps trying to grab debris. So I believe the invention of the computer Internet is an inevitable consequence of a previously proven biologically successful model. The Earth invented the computer Internet for its own benefit, and we now, being the top organism on this planet, are trying to allocate resources in order to protect the biosphere.

Going way out, dark matter conforms to the same mycelial archetype. I believe matter begets life, life becomes single cells, single cells become strings, strings become chains, chains network. And this is the paradigm that we see throughout the universe.

Most of you may not know that fungi were the first organisms to come to land. They came to land 1.3 billion years ago, and plants followed several hundred million years later. How is that possible? It's possible because the mycelium produces oxalic acids and many other acids and enzymes, pockmarking rock and grabbing calcium and other minerals and forming calcium oxalates. Makes the rocks crumble, and the first step in the generation of soil. Oxalic acid is two carbon dioxide molecules joined together. So fungi and mycelium sequester carbon dioxide in the form of calcium oxalates. And all sorts of other oxalates are also sequestering carbon dioxide through the minerals that are being formed and taken out of the rock matrix.

This was first discovered in 1859. This is a photograph by Franz Hueber. This photograph's taken 1950s in Saudi Arabia. 420 million years ago, this organism existed. It was called Prototaxites. Prototaxites, laying down, was about three feet tall. The tallest plants on Earth at that time were less than two feet. Dr. Boyce, at the University of Chicago, published an article in the Journal of Geology this past year determining that Prototaxites was a giant fungus, a giant mushroom. Across the landscapes of Earth were dotted these giant mushrooms. All across most land masses. And these existed for tens of millions of years.

Now we've had several extinction events, and as we march forward -- 65 million years ago -- most of you know about it -- we had an asteroid impact. The earth was struck by an asteroid, a huge amount of debris was jettisoned into the atmosphere. Sunlight was cut off, and fungi inherited the Earth. Those organisms that paired with fungi were rewarded, because fungi do not need light. More recently, at Einstein University, they just determined that fungi use radiation as a source of energy, much like plants use light. So the prospect of fungi existing on other planets elsewhere, I think, is a foregone conclusion, at least in my own mind.

The largest organism in the world is in Eastern Oregon. I couldn't miss it. It was 2,200 acres in size. 2,200 acres in size, 2,000 years old. The largest organism on the planet is a mycelial mat, one cell wall thick. How is it that this organism can be so large, and yet be one cell wall thick, whereas we have five or six skin layers that protect us? The mycelium, in the right conditions, produces a mushroom -- it bursts through with such ferocity that it can break asphalt. We were involved with several experiments. I'm going to show you six, if I can, solutions for helping to save the world. Battelle Laboratories and I joined up in Bellingham, Washington, there were four piles saturated with diesel and other petroleum waste. One was a control pile, one pile was treated with enzymes, one pile was treated with bacteria and our pile we inoculated with mushroom mycelium. The mycelium absorbs the oil. The mycelium is producing enzymes -- peroxydases -- that break carbon-hydrogen bonds. These are the same bonds that hold hydrocarbons together. So the mycelium becomes saturated with the oil, and then, when we returned six weeks later, all the tarps were removed, all the other piles were dead, dark, and stinky. We came back to our pile, it was covered with hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms -- and the color changed to a light form. The enzymes re-manufactured the hydrocarbons into carbohydrates -- fungal sugars.

Some of these mushrooms are very happy mushrooms. They're very large. They're showing how much nutrition that they could've obtained. But something else happened, which was an epiphany in my life. They sporulated, the spores attract insects, the insects laid eggs, eggs became larvae. Birds then came, bringing in seeds, and our pile became an oasis of life. Whereas the other three piles were dead, dark and stinky, and the PAH's -- the aromatic hydrocarbons -- went from 10,000 parts per million to less than 200 in eight weeks. The last image we don't have -- the entire pile was a green berm of life. These are gateway species. Vanguard species that open the door for other biological communities.

So I invented burlap sacks -- bunker spawn -- and putting the mycelium -- using storm blown debris you can take these burlap sacks and put them downstream from a farm that's producing E. coli, or other wastes, or a factory with chemical toxins, and it leads to habitat restoration. So we set up a site in Mason County, Washington, and we've seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of coliforms. And I'll show you a graph here. This is a logarithmic scale, 10 to the eighth power. There's more than a 100 million colonies per gram, and 10 to the third power is around 1,000. In 48 hours to 72 hours, these three mushroom species reduced the amount of coliform bacteria 10,000 times. Think of the implications. This is a space-conservative method that uses storm debris -- and we can be guaranteed that we will have storms every year.

So this one mushroom, in particular, has drawn our interest over time. This is my wife Dusty with a mushroom called Fomitopsis officinalis -- Agaricon. It's a mushroom exclusive to the old-growth forest, that Dioscorides first described in 65 A.D. as a treatment against consumption. This mushroom grows in Washington state, Oregon, Northern California, British Columbia, now thought to be extinct in Europe. May not seem that large -- let's get closer. This is extremely rare fungus. Our team -- and we have a team of experts that go out -- we went out 20 times in the old-growth forest last year. We found one sample to be able to get into culture.

Preserving the genome of these fungi in the old growth forest I think is absolutely critical for human health. I've been involved with the U.S. Defense Department BioShield program. We submitted over 300 samples of mushrooms that were boiled in hot water, and mycelium harvesting these extracellular metabolites. And a few years ago, we received these results. We have three different strains of Agaricon mushrooms that were highly active against pox viruses. Dr. Earl Kern, who's a smallpox expert of the U.S. Defense Department, states that any compounds that have a selectivity index of two or more are active. 10 or greater are considered to be very active. Our mushroom strains were in the highly active range. There's a vetted press release that you can read -- it's vetted by DOD, if you Google "Stamets" and "smallpox." Or you can go to NPR.org and listen to a live interview.

So, encouraged by this, naturally we went to flu viruses. And so for the first time I am showing this. We have three different strains of Agaricon mushrooms highly active against flu viruses. Here's the selectivity index numbers -- against pox, you saw 10s and 20s -- now against flu viruses, compared to the ribavirin controls, we have an extraordinarily high activity. And we're using a natural extract within the same dosage window as a pure pharmaceutical. We tried it against flu A viruses -- H1N1, H3N2 -- as well as flu B viruses. So then we tried a blend, and in a blend combination we tried it against H5N1, and we got greater than 1,000 selectivity index. (Applause) I then think that we can make the argument that we should save the old-growth forest as a matter of national defense. (Applause)

I became interested in entomopathogenic fungi -- fungi that kill insects. Our house was being destroyed by carpenter ants. So I went to the EPA homepage, and they were recommending studies with metarhizium species of a group of fungi that kill carpenter ants, as well as termites. I did something that nobody else had done. I actually chased the mycelium when it stopped producing spores. These are spores -- this is in their spores. I was able to morph the culture into a non-sporulating form. And so the industry has spent over 100 million dollars specifically on bait stations to prevent termites from eating your house. But the insects aren't stupid, and they would avoid the spores when they came close, and so I morphed the cultures into a non-sporulating form. And I got my daughter's Barbie doll dish, I put it right where a bunch of carpenter ants were making debris fields, every day, in my house, and the ants were attracted to the mycelium, because there's no spores. They gave it to the queen. One week later, I had no sawdust piles whatsoever.

And then -- a delicate dance between dinner and death -- the mycelium is consumed by the ants, they become mummified and, boing, a mushroom pops out of their head. (Laughter) Now after sporulation, the spores repel. So the house is no longer suitable for invasion. So you have a near-permanent solution for re-invasion of termites. And so my house came down, I received my first patent against carpenter ants, termites and fire ants. Then we tried extracts, and lo and behold, we can steer insects to different directions. This has huge implications. I then received my second patent -- and this is a big one. It's been called an Alexander Graham Bell patent -- It covers over 200,000 species. This is the most disruptive technology, I've been told by executives of the pesticide industry, that they have ever witnessed. This could totally revamp the pesticide industries throughout the world. You could fly 100 Ph.D. students under the umbrella of this concept, because my supposition is that entomopathogenic fungi, prior to sporulation, attract the very insects that are otherwise repelled by those spores.

And so I came up with a Life Box because I needed a delivery system. The Life Box -- you're gonna be getting a DVD of the TED conference -- you add soil, you add water, you have mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi as well as spores, like of the Agaricon mushroom. The seeds then are mothered by this mycelium. And then you put tree seeds in here, and then you end up growing -- potentially -- an old growth forest from a cardboard box.

I want to re-invent the delivery system, and the use of cardboard around the world, so they become ecological footprints. If there's a YouTube like site that you could put up, you could make it interactive, zip code-specific -- where people could join together, and through satellite imaging systems, through Virtual Earth or Google Earth, you could confirm carbon credits are being sequestered by the trees that are coming through Life Boxes.

You could take a cardboard box delivering shoes, you could add water -- I developed this for the refugee community -- corns, beans, and squash, and onions. I took several containers -- my wife said if I could do this, anybody could -- and I ended up growing a seed garden. Then you harvest the seeds -- and thank you, Eric Rasmussen, for your help on this -- and then you're harvesting the seed garden. Then you can harvest the kernels, and then you just need a few kernels -- I add mycelium to it, and then I inoculate the corn cobs. Now, three corn cobs, no other grain -- lots of mushrooms begin to form. Too many withdrawals from the carbon bank, and so this population will be shut down. But watch what happens here. The mushrooms then are harvested, but very importantly, the mycelium has converted the cellulose into fungal sugars. And so I thought, how could we address the energy crisis in this country? And we came up with Econol.

Generating ethanol from cellulose using mycelium as an intermediary -- and you gain all the benefits that I've described to you already. But to go from cellulose to ethanol is ecologically unintelligent, and I think that we need to be econologically intelligent about the generation of fuels. So we build the carbon banks on the planet, renew the soils -- these are a species that we need to join with. I think engaging mycelium can help save the world. Thank you very much. (Applause)