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Mushrooms for Research


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Hi Everyone - 

I am with a small biotech company named Salomon's House.  We screen natural products against infectious diseases and also a few cancer cell lines - and by small, I mean 2 people small..  We mainly work with plants and endophytes (bacterial and fungal) but I started growing some edible mushrooms for fun and thought we needed to start running any of these mushrooms collected in the wild against our screens in the lab.  I would like to offer anyone willing to send us spore prints from a species that they can ID (edible or not) $5 to cover postage and we will bring it into culture and screen it through our system.  Sorry we can't pay much for the samples but we do want to make sure you're not out any money.  We can also follow up with you and let you know the results of the screening if you're interested.  I plan on keeping a running list of what we have in inventory here so we don't start receiving duplicates.  Current inventory is small!  Just one Dave W helped ID on here is Boletinellus merulioides and three unknowns we have in culture.  I will try to get the info on these posted shortly to get some help with identification.

Please reach out to me by email to let me know you are going to send a sample:  matt@salomonshouse.com

Inventory:

Boletinellus merulioides

3 unknowns

 

Thanks!

Matt

Also, please do not send anything illegal - no psychedelics!

 

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Good for you MattSH. it's nice to see people looking for natural alternatives to big pharma. unfortunately I am Canadian so I can not send you any samples over the border, but I wish you the best of luck.

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Aluminum foil is all that I've ever used.  I read or was told that it's made at such a hot temperature, the roll is somewhat sterile.  Just wrap the foil back over the print once it's dry and then place in a zip-lock bag or cling wrap.

Even if there's some contamination from the foil on the first plate, most of the time it's easy to isolate a clean sample onto another plate from the first.  

If the mushroom really has some meat to it, then just sending a small chunk of the mushroom wrapped in foil should allow me to get a sterile biopsy.  I've had to do that when I couldn't get a spore print from a sample (either too late or too early).

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I noticed the website is trying to raise money so here's an idea if it helps with maintaining this website.  Every sample I receive I will send $3 to the sender to cover postage and trouble and then I'll donate $2 to the website?  Or it can be the sender's choice if they want the $2 donation to the website.  

 

Thanks

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Hi Dave, Can the dehydrated material be brought back on/in media?  If I can get mycelial growth going again then it would work.  Our testing involves stressing the live cultures and seeing how the metabolic profile changes from the unstressed.  The spores are just easy for storage - I usually use a little for starting a culture and then put the rest in cyro media to store in a -80.

I'm not particular on the type of mushroom but diversity would be good.  When we started with plants, we first tried to find a representative of each order (that's a number I can get my head around), then each family and just deeper from there.  At this point though my collection of mushroom species is almost nothing so anything would be adding diversity.  

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Okay, I think I see. Your research aim is to grow mushrooms from spore. I'll collect some spore material for you. Spores from individual mushroom collections, each folded up into a small piece of aluminum foil. 

If the above understanding is correct, then I think you have a better chance to succeed using sores from saprobic fungal species (than mycorrhizal ones). 

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Thanks Dave.  That would be great if you can get us some spore material.

Our address is:  Salomon's House

                             200 East Spring St

                             Lebanon, TN 37087

Sorry I don't think I was clear on our screening.  We screen them as a mycelial culture in liquid media and therefore don't need to grow the mushroom again.  I've been trying to grow a few back just for fun but for our screening it isn't necessary.

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  • 3 weeks later...

We just received our first spore print.  I'm not sure if the person wants to be named so I am just going to say thank you and update the inventory.  The person that sent the spore print wanted the full $5 dollars to go to the wildmushroomhunting board.  

Updated Inventory:

Boletinellus merulioides

Phylloporus boletinoides

 

Thanks again!

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  • 2 weeks later...

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