Erika Walback - Lab 5 Jelly Tree Ear Fungus
One fungi species I observed was Auricularia auricula-judae, more commonly known as Jelly Tree Ear fungus. A study conducted at Chiang Mai University found that an extract from this fungus could promote wound-healing. This extract is rich in polysaccharide sugars and was found to augment the wound healing process by increasing collagen synthesis, which is a protein important for skin durability and stretchiness. It did so in a mice-wound model and the effects were significant after 9 days (Mapoung et al., 2021). This goes to show how useful fungi can be for humans, even fungi that you can see just by walking around in a park.
