Toadstool footstools: Are organisms manufacturing's future?

The mycelium grows around small pieces of stalks and stems to create a bound-together material that can be molded into soft packaging for glassware or pressed into the boards used for the footstools they recently began selling.

The simple stools are organic markers in ambitious efforts by researchers worldwide to commercially grow fungi, bacteria and proteins into clothing and building materials.

McIntyre rapped his knuckles on one of their "myco-boards," which look and feel similar to the particle boards that are commonplace in cabinets and big-box store furniture.

Today, they employ about 90 people in a business that found initial success selling a compostable alternative to plastic foams used for packaging items like computers and glass bottles.

The bricks stiffen over several days with the formation of calcium carbonate between the grains of sand, mimicking the process that makes coral reefs sturdy.

Pelling, who runs a biophysical manipulation lab, has done work growing human ear cells using the cellulose from apples as a sort of scaffolding.