FUNGAS Student Works

At ZHAW, the FUNGAS project has already provided a fascinating research topic to four Minor-Students (5th semester bachelor students preparing for their thesis) and one Bachelor student.

As with any project concerning anaerobic fungi, the maintenance of a culture collection is a big part of the routine laboratory work. The fungi must be subcultivated each week, and preservation techniques are not yet fully reliable, leading to potential loss of cultures. As such, our Minor students in 2023 prepared backup cryostocks of fungi, which were then resuscitated in 2024 by their successors. They achieved revival of half of the strains that were frozen, and even brought back a lost strain into regular cultivation. Additionally, the identity of the strains was confirmed via PCR and sequencing as well as microscopic analysis, yielding stunning pictures. In the future, students may try different preservation techniques to improve the revival efficiency.

While the Minor-Students were busy with maintaining the fungi, the Bachelor thesis went bigger: Our Rubicon, a 4 liter bioreactor for upscaled continuous cultivation of fungi on suspended straw, had to be repaired and restarted. After many technical difficulties, the reactor was assembled and the fungi were successfully grown. As always, time flies too fast, and operational data over longer time spans are still necessary to see if the fungi stay viable in this reactor setting – certainly another topic for future students.