Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Fungal systems for security and resilience

Andrew Adamatzky

TL;DR

The paper addresses resilience and security challenges in critical infrastructure operating under disruption by proposing living fungal systems, especially mycelial networks, as biohybrid substrates that simultaneously sense, process, and repair within environments. It unifies perspectives from biology, electrophysiology, and materials science to map fungal properties—decentralised control, embodied memory, self-healing, and low-observability—onto resilience needs and outlines a roadmap from controlled lab studies to field prototypes. Key contributions include a unified framework for fungal security applications, a detailed catalog of living fungal sensors and their modalities, and a staged research agenda emphasizing robustness, tamper evidence, and long-duration operation. The work argues for an orthogonal layer of protection that persists when conventional digital systems degrade, enabling persistent monitoring, evidence of interference, and graceful degradation in extreme conditions.

Abstract

Modern security, infrastructure, and safety-critical systems increasingly operate in environments characterised by disruption, uncertainty, physical damage, and degraded communications. Conventional digital technologies -- centralised sensors, software-defined control, and energy-intensive monitoring -- often struggle under such conditions. We propose fungi, and in particular living mycelial networks, as a novel class of biohybride systems for security, resilience, and protection in extreme environments. We discuss how fungi can function as distributed sensing substrates, self-healing materials, and low-observability anomaly-detection layers. We map fungal properties -- such as decentralised control, embodied memory, and autonomous repair -- to applications in infrastructure protection, environmental monitoring, tamper evidence, and long-duration resilience.

Fungal systems for security and resilience

TL;DR

The paper addresses resilience and security challenges in critical infrastructure operating under disruption by proposing living fungal systems, especially mycelial networks, as biohybrid substrates that simultaneously sense, process, and repair within environments. It unifies perspectives from biology, electrophysiology, and materials science to map fungal properties—decentralised control, embodied memory, self-healing, and low-observability—onto resilience needs and outlines a roadmap from controlled lab studies to field prototypes. Key contributions include a unified framework for fungal security applications, a detailed catalog of living fungal sensors and their modalities, and a staged research agenda emphasizing robustness, tamper evidence, and long-duration operation. The work argues for an orthogonal layer of protection that persists when conventional digital systems degrade, enabling persistent monitoring, evidence of interference, and graceful degradation in extreme conditions.

Abstract

Modern security, infrastructure, and safety-critical systems increasingly operate in environments characterised by disruption, uncertainty, physical damage, and degraded communications. Conventional digital technologies -- centralised sensors, software-defined control, and energy-intensive monitoring -- often struggle under such conditions. We propose fungi, and in particular living mycelial networks, as a novel class of biohybride systems for security, resilience, and protection in extreme environments. We discuss how fungi can function as distributed sensing substrates, self-healing materials, and low-observability anomaly-detection layers. We map fungal properties -- such as decentralised control, embodied memory, and autonomous repair -- to applications in infrastructure protection, environmental monitoring, tamper evidence, and long-duration resilience.
Paper Structure (36 sections, 4 figures)

This paper contains 36 sections, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Fungi as distributed resilient systems
  3. Mycelial architecture
  4. Electrophysiology and signalling
  5. Self-healing and persistence
  6. Biological variability and operational robustness
  7. Biohybrid fungal systems for security and protection
  8. Living fungal sensors
  9. Mechanical sensing
  10. Chemical sensing
  11. Optical and photic sensitivity
  12. Electrical coupling and perturbation sensing
  13. Distributed and analogue sensing
  14. Energy efficiency and low observability
  15. Implications for resilient sensing
  16. ...and 21 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Enhanced photo of a mycelium network shows wave like propagation from the substrate along the wall of a glass container.
  • Figure 2: Examples of spiking actvity recorded from a substrate colonised with oyaster fungi.
  • Figure 3: Electrical response of fungal composite to stretching.
  • Figure 4: Mycelium propagating on an electronic board.