Can mushroom mycelium store data? Testing organic memristors

Scientists at Ohio State University have put forward an unexpected alternative to conventional memory: mushroom mycelium as the storage medium. The team evaluated shiitake and button mushroom mycelium as organic memristors—components capable of retaining their previous electrical state.

In their experiments, the mycelium was grown in Petri dishes on substrates made of grain, hay, and wheat sprouts at roughly 20–22 °C and high humidity. The samples were then sun-dried for a week until rigid, and, before testing, their conductivity was restored by lightly misting them with deionized water. Electrodes were connected to the material to track its response under different voltages and signal waveforms.

It turned out that at about one volt the mycelium performed most steadily. In this regime the material truly behaved like a memristor, changing its resistance according to prior stimulation. In separate trials, the researchers brought the system closer to a RAM-like mode, reaching a frequency around 6 kHz with roughly 90% accuracy.

Even so, the authors emphasized that no one is replacing DRAM or SSDs with fungi anytime soon. Fungal memory is not suited to storing gigabytes of data and does not address the high price of memory modules. Practical deployment would require much higher density, better stability, scalability, and compatibility with existing interfaces.

Still, the work stands out as a low-cost, eco-minded way to build experimental memory elements. It also hints at a broader truth: in the hunt for new data-storage ideas, researchers are willing to probe materials that seem unlikely at first glance—including mushrooms. As a proof of concept, the idea feels both frugal and oddly elegant.