Jakob Blæsbjerg Hoof, a researcher and associate professor at DTU Bioengineering, is trying to learn everything there is to know about fungi. He wants to share this knowledge with as many people as possible. After all, there is a lot we can learn from them.
"It's quite wrong when textbooks put fungi in the same category as plants because, unlike plants, fungi do not photosynthesize. Instead, they absorb nutrients, such as carbon, from their environment, just as we do. They have also learnt to live in symbiosis with their environment. For example, there are moulds that make plant roots grow faster and better," enthuses Jakob Blæsbjerg Hoof.
At the beginning of his career, he focused a lot on the "engineering" of fungi, i.e. making man-made changes to the fungal organism to promote beneficial properties.
One beneficial property could be the production of bioactive substances and useful enzymes by fungi.
Currently, the focus is on investigating the properties that natural fungi already possess. This is where DTU's extensive fungi collection, also known as the IBT Culture Collection, comes in.
This consists of around 39,000 mould isolates stored in four cold rooms at 9 degrees Celsius. An isolate is obtained by collecting mould samples. These are first purified in Petri dishes and then identified by the researchers. The isolate is then placed in the collection.
Overall, each isolate exhibits its own unique characteristics. Some properties are beneficial to humans, such as when a mould can be used as an ingredient in medicine or food products. Other properties are far from useful; for example, some moulds produce toxic compounds and problematic spores.
Either way, Jakob Blæsbjerg Hoof is becoming increasingly knowledgeable about them. He wants to pass on his curiosity to the students he teaches.
"I try to create the right environment in which to experiment and learn from the experience. The exciting thing about studying is the development, not just reaching the goal," he explains.
