Fung-Growth Database

Howdy Mycopreneurs,

Welcome to the Mycopreneur Newsletter - a global hub for mushroom innovation and the entrepreneurs advancing human fungi relations. I just returned from the Telluride Mushroom Festival. ‘TMF’ is the oldest and biggest mushroom festival in the U.S. and just celebrated its 45th edition with much fanfare and eccentricity.

The festival is an extraordinarily conducive environment to connection, collaboration, and cross-pollination among fungiphiles.

HUGE Shoutout to regular Mycopreneur Incubator attendees KK from Flora Funga Podcast and Flying Fungi for making the cross-country trek to come hang out with everyone - and in KK’s case, to make her public speaking debut talking about Lichens to a packed house!

People love to decry how expensive and exclusive TMF and similar festivals are, but the truth of the matter is that plenty of people don’t buy a ticket or attend any of the formal programming; so much of the event is free and simply about being part of the atmosphere and magic. A number of folks I know who bought tickets or were sponsors of the festival didn’t go to any of the paid programming at all because of the many sideshows, spontaneous happenings, dinner parties, forays and parties that happen freely in the orbit of TMF. This insight applies to sooo many of the different festivals and conferences around mushrooms - take it and run with it! Yes lodging can be very expensive, but camping and hosteling are two affordable options that will put you in the same nexus as the fancy lodge dwellers.

I’ve got a full recap of the festival coming out on another platform soon, but here are two of my programming highlights:

My programming highlights of the week were Giuliana Furci of Fungi Foundation sharing her experience with the foundation's ongoing global initiative to archive traditional indigenous fungi knowledge and her advocacy to incorporate mycologically inclusive language in international environmental policy frameworks with the United Nations. 

Festival favorite William Padilla-Brown of MycoSymbiotics also lit up the festival with his talk about truffles around the world. I learned that these subterranean mycelial treats grow all over the planet and across North America, but the extent of the truffle biodiversity in many places is completely unknown since we haven’t been looking for them. Truffles may have been introduced to the Romans by the cultures of North Africa, who have been foraging for the Terfeziaceae ‘Desert Truffle’ for millennia. 

Truffles harbor over 100 different volatile aromatics, meaning that their scents and flavors are intensely wild and difficult to describe or properly appreciate unless you have them in front of you. Fortunately Will brought a couple of samples of some rare truffles; their olfactory profile ranged from gasoline to nuttiness to old McDonald’s french fries. Don’t knock ‘em til you’ve tried them!

FUNG-GROWTH Database

A new open-access resource, FUNG-GROWTH, offers an unprecedented link between fungal genetic potential and actual growth performance on diverse carbon sources.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬:

Growth profiles for ~400 fungal species, most with public genome sequences, tested on 10 monosaccharides, 5 oligosaccharides, 11 polysaccharides, 7 crude plant biomass substrates, and 3 non-sugar conditions.

Standardized positive and negative controls for comparative analysis across species.

Visual documentation of the influence of the carbon source on fungal macromorphology 

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨:

1. Compare enzymatic capabilities across the fungal kingdom.

2. Identify promising species for targeted enzyme discovery.

3. Better link genomic data to functional traits for applied microbiology.

 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞: 

The FUNG-GROWTH database: linking fungal phenotype to genome

Blowout Amanita muscaria + Regalis Deal.

Our partners at Minnesota Nice Ethnobotanicals are offering a blowout clearance sale on remaining inventory to make room for next years crops. This is definitely the highest quality and most affordable source for Amanita muscaria and Regalis fruiting bodies that you will find anywhere, and I’ve personally consumed these mushrooms on numerous occasions to great effect and results. In particular, I find Amanita muscaria to amplify dream states and promote deep rest. As with anything, educate yourself beforehand by checking out their resources on the website as well as third party sites, then ‘start low and go slow’.

Psilosoma Project Survey

I’ve been tracking this very interesting project out of Italy that surveys the psilocybin mushrooms of the Mediterranean region - an area (like much of the world) without much dedicated research to the psychoactive Funga of the region. This project is broadening its scope to survey psilocybe mushroom knowledge in different parts of the world - as far as I can tell, it’s the only project of its kind that focuses exclusively on psilocybe knowledge around the world. As an interesting example of the type of folk wisdom and anecdotal data they’re after, when I visited Serbia last year I learned that there are still traditional healers deep in the Balkans who use Psilocybe serbica in their traditional folk medicine practices, yet this potentially ancient practice does not seem to be described or archived anywhere outside of oral transmission by those in the region.

Welcome to the Psilosoma Project, a research initiative led by naturalist Dr. Fabio Mao Valletta.

This project aims to document, preserve, and value traditional knowledge about psychoactive fungi (such as Psilocybe species) and other organisms used in spiritual, medicinal, and cultural contexts.

Data collected will be analyzed and published for scientific and educational purposes, always respecting:

The will of participants

Confidentiality of personal data

Intellectual property of communities

The principles of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC)

Researcher commitments:

Collect data ethically and collaboratively

Involve communities in the research process

Correctly acknowledge sources

Share benefits and results with participants

Check out the Psilosoma Project below:

Tryptomics x CU Boulder Acute and Long-Term Observation Study on Psilocybin

This bit for today’s newsletter was contributed by our trusty resident analytical chemist Ian Bollinger:

Tryptomics and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Dr. Kent Hutchinson are partnering on the Acute and Long-Term Observation Study on Psilocybin (ALTA); a groundbreaking project exploring how psilocybin affects people both in the moment and weeks after their experience. By combining advanced chemical analysis of mushrooms with participant trip reports, we aim to better understand how potency profiles influence both short-term and long-term outcomes, empowering safer and more informed use.

If you have used psilocybin before and live in Colorado, you may qualify to participate. The ALTA Study involves four study visits over five weeks—two in-person at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus and two remote, including a single psilocybin session you will complete on your own. You will also complete brief weekly remote check-ins for four weeks afterward. Participation may involve questionnaires, a urine drug and pregnancy screen, and a saliva sample, depending on the visit. You can earn up to $200 compensation for your time.

For people who already plan to consume mushrooms, CU Anschutz offers free, anonymous potency testing and compensation to each participant with your results used to help link chemistry to experience as part of this research. Whether you’re a cultivator curious about your harvest or an individual ready to share your experience, your participation will directly support harm-reduction efforts and cutting-edge science. Through your participation; help us build a safer, better informed future.

Fungi Film Festival

The 6th Annual Fungi Film Festival submission deadline is coming up August 31st.

This is a stunning audio-visual celebration of mushrooms and mycelium is the world’s only film festival dedicated to mushrooms, lichens, and, and micro fungi. Selected films will screen via on demand streaming for a limited window of time and there will also be showings organized by various mycological societies and fungiphiles in different parts of the world. The festival was founded by Peter McCoy, a living treasure and author of the tome Radical Mycology that you shouldn’t definitely read if you haven’t already. Check out the fedtival website below:

Mycopreneur Incubator Today

Join us at today’s Mycopreneur Incubator and connect directly with a consortium of mushroom entrepreneurs, advocates, journalists, lawyers, the myco-curious and more who are shaping the future of fungal innovation.

Time: Today, Aug 21, 2025 3:00 PM East Coast U.S. / 12 pm West Coast

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86315287688?pwd=zJMLsfB5yfPxllpIXrteoPSNiAqOhQ.1

Meeting ID: 863 1528 7688

Passcode: 404829

Please make a financial contribution in the amount of your choice if you plan on attending or if you want to support the Mycopreneur platform at large:

Thanks for reading the Mycopreneur Newsletter, and please share this with your mycophile friends if you found it compelling. The coverage and resources found in this newsletter are compiled by direct interaction with the sources of information and accrued over the week - For example, out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT to summarize the global mushroom news for this week and got 4 news stories total, many of which are months old. I will continue to survey and compile information and happenings in the myco world through direct communication with and diligent study of those who are on the frontlines shaping the future with a little help from our fungi friends.

Cheers,

Dennis