Scientists are turning to something that’s been quietly fixing nature for billions of years: mushrooms.

A Swiss team at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, otherwise known as Empa, has bio-hacked a split-gill mushroom into a shape-shifting, plastic-like material that’s alive, sustainable, and durable.

It’s all thanks to Living Fiber Dispersion, a plastic-y material made from mycelia. Mycelia is the root-like web that mushrooms use to stretch and grow, eventually creating vast, complex underground mycelium networks.

But, unlike other mycelium-based materials that are rendered sterile before use, this stuff is left alive. It retains its full network of proteins, fibrous macromolecules, and all the squishy structural scaffolding fungi naturally make to prot

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