A team at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Formulation Engineering is developing a microstructure – an air filled emulsion coated in protein - that resembles the physical properties of a fat globule. The protein is hydrophobin which comes from mushrooms. This new structure could replace fat in foods such as salad dressings, mayonnaise, sauces and even spreads and margarines.

The humble white button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) has as much, and in some cases, more anti-oxidant properties than more expensive varieties.

In more news from the Swedish wilderness, January brings the first mushrooms of the year to the country’s woods.

Alpha-amanitin is the poison of the death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. The Michigan State University plant biology research associate was looking for a big gene that makes a big enzyme that produces alpha-amanitin, since that’s how other fungi produce similar compounds. But after years of defeat, she and her team called in the big guns – new technology that sequences DNA about as fast as a death cap mushroom can kill.

Researchers at the University of Warwick are co-ordinating a global effort to sequence the genome of one of the World’s most important mushrooms - Agaricus bisporus. The secrets of its genetic make up could assist the creation of biofuels, support the effort to manage global carbon, and help remove heavy metals from contaminated soils.

Mushrooms might serve as biofactories for the production of various beneficial human drugs, according to plant pathologists who have inserted new genes into mushrooms.