Scientists Turned Ordinary Shiitake Mushrooms into Living Computers
Your next computer might grow in a compost heap.
– byTibi Puiu
You can grow a computer on your kitchen counter. Well, sort of. That’s the radical implication of new research from The Ohio State University, where scientists have turned humble shiitake mushrooms into living electronic devices that can remember information.
In their new study, psychiatrist and research scientist John LaRocco and colleagues describe a fungus-based computing system that mimics how neurons process information.
“Being able to develop microchips that mimic actual neural activity means you don’t need a lot of power for standby or when the machine isn’t being used,” said LaRocco. “That’s something that can be a huge potential computational and economic advantage.”
The Rise of the Mushristor
Memristors — short for “memory resistors” — are the brainlike workhorses of neuromorphic computing, capable of learning from previous electrical states. Traditional versions are made of silicon or metal oxides, born in costly foundries and dependent on rare-earth minerals. The Ohio State team decided to replace all that with fungi. Because why not?
Specifically, they turned to shiitake mushrooms (Lentinula edodes), known for their resilience and peculiar sensitivity to electrical stimuli. So, the researchers grew the fungi in Petri dishes filled with farro, wheat germ, and hay until the mycelium formed a dense white mat. Then they dried the samples in sunlight, rehydrated them just enough to restore conductivity, and connected them to an Arduino-powered circuit. What they got was a memristor — a sort of tiny bioelectronic brain cell — that could remember and respond to electrical patterns.
“We would connect electrical wires and probes at different points on the mushrooms because distinct parts of it have different electrical properties,” said LaRocco. “Depending on the voltage and connectivity, we were seeing different performances.”
At low frequencies, the fungal chips switched states at up to 5,850 signals per second with about 90% accuracy. At slower voltages, that number climbed to 95%, rivaling the speed and precision of early silicon-based memristors. Like human synapses, the mushrooms could “learn” to adjust their resistance when stimulated repeatedly.