[einpoklum]

Ok, but:

1. Is it doable to maintain a 21-cm thick layer of fungus, at all, let alone in space, for a prolonged period of time?

2. Wouldn't it be easier/simpler to replicate this radio-synthesis mechanism in a non-organic setting?

[dogma1138]

> Is it doable to maintain a 21-cm thick layer of fungus, at all, let alone in space, for a prolonged period of time?

Building a living wall isn’t hard, I have one with moss in my flat it does wonders for air quality (even if not actual one just the smell/perception is enough), fungus is easy to grow - feed it shit and keep it in the dark does work.

> Wouldn't it be easier/simpler to replicate this radio-synthesis mechanism in a non-organic setting?

This is pretty much one the hardest things to do in science today, replicating complex biological processes in a non-biological manner.

Insulin while being the first human protein to be synthesized today is still created using biotechnology by using bacteria to manufacture it simply because of how difficult it is to synthesize proteins.

[perl4ever]

>Insulin while being the first human protein to be synthesized today is still created using biotechnology by using bacteria to manufacture it

An interesting factoid I ran across is where citric acid comes from. I had noticed inexpensive "lemon iced tea" had citric acid listed as an ingredient, and vaguely thought perhaps it's called that just because the citrus source is heavily processed.

Turns out, while citric acid was originally produced on an industrial scale from fruit, circa WWI, due to shortages, Pfizer started making it using microbes, specifically black mold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid

[dogma1138]

Citric acid is used as a preservative and regulator in food so it will be added even if the ingredients contain it naturally simply for consistency with flavored drinks it’s even more common to basically break everything down to their base chemical ingredients and then add them back in at the exact amounts.

Overall pretty much anything that is naturally produced in plants and animals will already be the most “efficient” way of doing that both due to natural selection and both due to the fact that the process is easily scalable, heck we still make rubber from the rubber tree because nothing else comes close to that.

Chemistry is fucking hard and we don’t have anything close to the molecular machinery that living organisms have to assemble complex molecules.

Chemistry in living things is like a robotic assembly line in a factory, chemistry in manufacturing is throw stuff into a reaction chamber and stir it until something happens.

[einpoklum]

But you don't need to replicate the complex biology - just the simple chemistry. Just like a solar panel doesn't replicate photosynthesis.

[dogma1138]

Creating the same molecules would be considerably more complex than harvesting them heck we might not even be able to make them at all there is a plethora of compounds we use on a daily basis we can’t synthesize.

Your example isn’t a particularly good one solar panels and photosynthesis don’t operate in the same manner, if we needed to produce chlorophyll at scale we probably wouldn’t be able too.

[filoeleven]

On (2): It is often easier to have the organism do it for us.

Fungi are especially good at creating defense compounds like antivirals, antibacterials, and antifungals. This makes sense when you think about how they grow: miles of hyphae in a single square inch, and only one cell wall keeping the inside from the outside.

There are a lot of compounds that we don’t know how to synthesize, or where it’s so costly so as not to be worth it. Compare that to simply feeding a mushroom waste and waiting. Plants work similar wonders with chemistry.