Fungi are an understudied, biotechnologically valuable group of organisms. Due to 
the immense range of habitats that fungi inhabit, and the consequent need to compete against a diverse array of other fungi, bacteria, and animals, fungi have developed numerous survival mechanisms. The unique attributes of fungi thus herald great promise for their application in biotechnology and industry. Moreover, fungi can be grown with relative ease, making production at scale viable. The search for fungal biodiversity, and the construction of a living fungi collection, both have incredible economic potential in locating organisms with novel industrial uses that will lead to novel products. This manuscript reviews fifty ways in which fungi can potentially be utilized as biotechnology. We provide notes and examples for each potential exploitation and give examples from our own work and the work of other notable researchers. We also provide a flow chart that can be used to convince funding bodies of the importance of fungi for biotechnological research and as potential products. Fungi have provided the world with penicillin, lovastatin, and other globally significant medicines, and they remain an untapped resource with enormous industrial potential.

The amazing potential of fungi: 50 ways we can exploit fungi industrially

Processing and chemical constituents of Pu-erh tea: A review

Microbial bioconversion of the chemical components in dark tea.

Pu-erh tea is a popular beverage in southwestern China and South Asian countries. To explain the differences of aged pu-erh tea and ripened pu-erh tea, the chemical constituents of these teas were ...

Comparison of the chemical constituents of aged pu-erh tea, ripened pu-erh tea, and other teas using HPLC-DAD-ESI-MSn.

Brick dark tea is a unique brick-formed tea compressed from the older, coarse and rough leaves and branches of Camellia sinensis var. sinensis and C. sinensis var. assamica mainly in Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in China. Researches on brick dark tea have become increasingly popular owing to its special health benefits. A series of biochemical reactions occur during the special production—microbial fermentation stage and multitudinous components have been detected. Many of the functional components have been isolated and identified from brick dark tea. In this paper, modern manufacturing techniques about different kinds of brick dark tea and their effects on transformation of the chemical constituents, as well as the chemical components were reviewed and discussed.

Shuxia Hu

Papers

Study on the increase mechanism of the caffeine content during the fermentation of tea with microorganisms