文档介绍：As a species, humans are adept at inventing toxins yet equally inept at eliminating them from our environment.
Bill Moyers (2001) reported in Trade Secrets, a Public Broadcasting Service program, that analysis of his blood by Mt. Sinai Medical Hospital revealed 84 of 150 known industrial toxins, many of them carcinogenic (13 dioxins, 31 PCBs, several pesticides, and numerous heavy metals).
Most citizens of this , unfortunately, are likely to have similar blood profiles.
With current trends, our exposure to dangerous chemicals increases with time as our environments e more polluted.
Simply put, pollution is an environmental disease that kills.
Mycoremediation is the use of fungi to degrade or remove toxins from the environment.
Fungi are adept as molecular disassemblers, breaking down many recalcitrant, long-chained toxins into simpler, less toxic chemicals.
Mycoremediation also holds promise for removing heavy metals from the land by channeling them to the fruitbodies for removal.
The powerful enzymes secreted by certain fungi digest lignin and cellulose, the primary ponents of wood.
These digestive enzymes can also break down a surprisingly wide range of toxins that have chemical bonds like those in wood.
Such mushrooms can be classified into 2 subgroups: brown rotters and white rotters.
Brown rot fungi’s extracellular enzymes break down the white, pulpy cellulose, leaving behind the brownish lignin (hence the name).
White rot fungi produce enzymes that break down the recalcitrant brown fiber in wood, leaving the cellulose largely intact, thus giving the wood a white appearance.