Fungal Automaton Research Proposal

Due to the energy crisis and climate change, new ways to provide clean renewable energy and production of food are being developed and researched, the demands of a modern complex society are way beyond the current infrastructure which can only partially provide in its full capacity the essential needs of the population. By studying nature, engineering may be inspired to develop new technologies to address these current issues. In particular, the kingdom of fungi can be used as a model for the following topics: computer architecture, energy supply, conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems, and farming; with the study of fungi’s chemical-electrical signals, and adaptable physical structure, it will be proposed that this organism with modern software and hardware can become an Interface for intelligent farming, being able to monitor and control crops/cultures of different organisms such as plants and insects in closed and open environments, finally becoming a Classical / Quantum Automaton.

Keywords: fungus/fungal/fungi, automaton, ecology, energy, quantum biology

Nature can be the subject of inspiration for creating new technologies; the understanding of living organisms may give more insight into solving modern complex problems. The way nature has evolved with ingenious paths to coexist with its environment is a resource we need to understand to overcome issues of modern society. 

Since the dawn of consciousness, fungi have been a subject of interest, becoming a nutrient, medicine, and perspective catalyst. It has been worshiped, studied, and used by cultures of the past until now. Mycelium, a network of fungal threads, has many appliances, e.g. Bio-products (synthetic leather), composites, an alternative for plastic, medicine, and more. As the popularity of the study of fungi increased, more focus on its appliances in the area of computer science has been researched. A few of the uses we can harvest and modify from this astonishing life form are the way this organism processes information, adapts to distinct environments, and efficiently produces and stores energy.

Towards A Fungal Computer¹ (Adamatzky, 2018) explores the possibility of using the electrical activity of fungi as a mechanism to create a framework for computer architecture.

Information transmission in microbial and fungal communication: from classical to quantum² (Majumdar and Pal, 2018) studies fungi cultures' behavior with classical and quantum mechanical approaches and proposes the concept of quantum synthetic biology and possible cellular quantum Turing test.

Fungal Automata³ (Adamatzky et al. 2020) proposes the cellular automaton model of information dynamics of one dimension on a filament of fungal mycelium where the behavior of organelles acts as informational flow valves, their condition is represented in a binary state and determines a set of rules that influences neighbor cells.

Lytic xylan oxidases from wood-decay fungi unlock biomass degradation⁴ (Couturier, M., Ladevèze, S., Sulzenbacher, G. et al. 2018) is a study that found a group of enzymes that gives more insight into the nature of the decomposition of wood. These enzymes could potentially be used to sustainably convert wood biomass into biofuel.

Our modern society demands the usage of electricity, it has become a necessity for our daily lives. Food, water, clothes, and shelter are basic human needs that nowadays depend on electricity; to be able to satisfy the population of the world, and avoid harming our ecosystem, new ways to provide sustainable energy and food are profoundly needed. On the other hand, we have computers that have the function to improve our lives, looking through different pathways to optimize tasks, they are everywhere, meant for multi or single-purpose tasks, and are responsible for processing information. New alternatives to perform computation are the further steps for an advanced society.

Networks of mycelium, commonly known as Nature’s Internet, had shown to be an essential part of natural environments, providing a pathway for distributing, quite efficiently, nutrients to all their inhabitants through long distances. Understanding this network could benefit distinct areas, e.g information processing, and reforestation projects, places where the soil is no longer fertile, fungi of different species may provide a mechanism for creating natural environments in a short timeframe, also controlling and monitoring natural resources for their continuous preservation and restoration. With that, the study of fungi species in nature reserves around the world will give an overall understanding of how natural environments work on a deeper level. The interpretation of its chemical and electrical activity allows one to understand natural environments and their needs in more depth. This can also be applied to open or closed farming crops, where the mycelium works as an interface for controlling and monitoring specific areas with the purpose of maintaining sustainable desired cultivation procedures. Antique cultivation processes are slightly used and it’s aimed at the transition to more contemporary techniques. In providing healthy sustainable food, organic agriculture plays an important role, and automation is a required feature for the present needs of our society.

The processes occurring within fungi living organisms are an important topic of research since some of them could be modified for their usage to perform computation, learn more about nature reserves ecosystems, and produce sustainable energy. Those processes or mechanisms can be gathered and studied to build mathematical frameworks within the classical and quantum information theory for creating a fungal automaton.

The development and use of electrical sensors are needed, where fungi’s activity can be measured and analyzed, therefore the study of its molecular structure is the starting point for understanding  fragments of mycelium electrical signals, and how information is handled at the molecular level to a macro level (mycelium cultures with specific dimensions).

With the obtained information from the study, it is proposed that with the created framework(s), fungi can perform computation, monitor and control natural environments and farming crops, and finally produce renewable energy.

Could mycelium, a network of fungal threads, as a living organism, with the aid of modern methods, software, and hardware, be used for quantum and classical computations, producing renewable energy and as a mechanism for efficient and sustainable organic agriculture in open and closed environments?

1. Development and research of microbial biosensors for further use in the retrieval of electrical and chemical activity of fungal cultures.
2. Investigate how fungi adapt and learn in distinct volatile open and closed environments, and retrieve the information of the environment embedded within the fungi.
3. Research the relation and function of quantum mechanics in the process of fungi microbial communication, which will lead to the construction of a framework within the quantum information theory for using this living organism for classical and quantum computation.
4. Creation of mathematical models to interpret fungi’s electrical and chemical activity.
5. Documentation and analysis of distinct fungi species in nature reserves in the regions of North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, for greater understanding, protection, and restoration of natural ecosystems.

Information collection of fungi species that have distinct characteristics, such as their relationship with different organisms, known processes that occur on a micro and macro scale, metabolism, sensibility to external stimuli, resilience, and others will be gathered, studied, and analyzed. Selected species are going to be determined for further research and examination. Those selected will be part of the process of the study where samples will be grown in specific test-driven environments with specific conditions and will be exposed to electrical and chemical stimuli. The tested cultures will be reproduced and set in a different environment from where they previously were. The magnitude of the response to stimuli and voltage fluctuations of the organisms during periods of time will be recorded.

The occurrence of phenotypes of particularly known genes in the literature is intended to be observed in the cultures of fungi from one generation to the next, the observation of changes and prediction of genotypes are meant to be analyzed for the intent of which specific genes will be targeted for constructing a mathematical framework. Depending on the ongoing process of the study, different statistical models will become operational.

Laboratory techniques will become functional during the experimentation of the cultures; agarose gel electrophoresis for species identification, biological ablation for observing specific reaction patterns, CRISPT-Cas9 for genome edition, and intracellular recording for electrical activity in single cells, are a few cases that may be useful through the study.

With machine and deep learning algorithms, the recorded data can be first structured and then reinterpreted for each scenario. The search for patterns in their outcome could provide the necessary tools for building a mathematical framework to use fungus as an Automaton.

Fungal electrical activity will be better understood, and new techniques will be able to use this living organism for producing energy with the aid of the analysis and created frameworks performed during the study. To expand the usage and knowledge of this organism, the comparison of the previous results with larger and exposed specimens will be necessary; the tests made during the research, those being exposures to electrical and chemical stimuli and the recording of their response, will be performed in natural regions in different parts of the world. This enables the mapping of fungal species, their behavior, and possible scheme of the integrity and information network of natural ecosystems in those tested regions.

1. Adamatzky, A. (2018). Towards fungal computer. Interface focus, 8(6), 20180029.
2. Majumdar, S., & Pal, S. (2018). Information transmission in microbial and fungal communication: from classical to quantum. Journal of cell communication and signaling, 12(2), 491-502.
3. Adamatzky, A., Goles, E., Tsompanas, M. A., Martínez, G. J., Wosten, H. A., & Tegelaar, M. (2022). On Fungal Automata. In Automata and Complexity (pp. 455-483). Springer, Cham.
4. Couturier, M., Ladeveze, S., Sulzenbacher, G., Ciano, L., Fanuel, M., Moreau, C., ... & Berrin, J. G. (2018). Lytic xylan oxidases from wood-decay fungi unlock biomass degradation. Nature chemical biology, 14(3), 306-310.
5. Adamatzky, A. (2010). Physarum machines: computers from slime mold (Vol. 74). World Scientific.
6. Moore, C., & Crutchfield, J. P. (2000). Quantum automata and quantum grammars. Theoretical Computer Science, 237(1-2), 275-306.