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Adaptive Fungal Architectures

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With an estimated 3.8 million species, fungi are amongst the most numerous creatures in the world. They started, shaped and maintained Earth ecosystems. Fungi also act as forest internet allowing trees to communicate with each other and with microbial populations. Fungi can sense everything humans can sense. Fungi demonstrate a high degree of proto-intelligence and show evidence of a long distance communication within their extended bodies that includes decision making. Fungi are also used as furniture, building and decoration materials. Taking into account all these unique properties of fungi we decided to produce a living and ‘thinking’ house made of fungi. Here we discuss our frst steps towards the biofabrication and implementation of our fungal architecture.
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66 67
Adaptive fungal architectures
Andrew Adamatzky,1 Antoni Gandia,2 Phil Ayres,3 Han Wösten,4 and
Martin Tegelaar5
With an estimated 3.8 million species, fungi are amongst the most numerous creatures in
the world. They started, shaped and maintained Earth ecosystems. Fungi also act as forest
internet allowing trees to communicate with each other and with microbial populations.
Fungi can sense everything humans can sense. Fungi demonstrate a high degree of pro-
to-intelligence and show evidence of a long distance communication within their extended
bodies that includes decision making. Fungi are also used as furniture, building and deco-
ration materials. Taking into account all these unique properties of fungi we decided to pro-
duce a living and ‘thinking’ house made of fungi. Here we discuss our rst steps towards
the biofabrication and implementation of our fungal architecture.
In 1953 the 25 year old Robert Sheckley pub-
lished “Specialist”,6 a short science ction sto-
ry that depicts, presumably for the rst time, a
galactic bio-ship driven by a crew comprised
of members of diverse intelligent species that
had to cooperate symbiotically forming the dif-
ferent parts of the craft; Engine, Thinker, Eye,
Pusher, etc. After Sheckley’s rst conceptualis-
ation, the idea of living and sentient bio-ships
has been growing in the sci- imaginary.
Bio-ships are made of biological components
and most can be considered lifeforms of their
own. Like other living beings, bio-ships can
sense their environment and respond to it,
searching for food sources, ghting and regen-
erating damaged parts, growing and reproduc-
ing their kind, and most-likely protecting and
nurturing their cargo, usually
members of other
species working for mutual benet. Despite
their organic nature, sci- bio-ships can be
gigantic, sturdy and able to travel harsh deep-
space conditions. An organic real-world mate-
rial able to offer some of these protective char-
acteristics is chitin, one of the most abundant
polymers on earth forming the shell of insects,
crustaceans and fungal cells.
Wild sci- is one of the best motors of scientif-
ic research pointing to possibilities far beyond
the current state of the art, or more precisely,
beyond our state of mind (Fig. 1). Visualising a
bio-ship can be helpful to understand the rela-
tionships within a forest or any given self-sus-
taining Earth’s ecosystem, including the human
body. Moreover, we can nd parallels between
the internal works of a bio-ship and the inten-
tion and the rationale behind a project such as
FUNGAR, acronym for Fungal Architectures, a
EU Horizon 2020 research project that seeks
to develop a fully integrated structural and
computational living monolith by using fungal
mycelium. The goal: to advance towards the
realisation of full-scale intelligent bio-build-
ings and other functional bio-structures. In this
short paper we introduce the state of the art of
fungal biofabrication technology and report on
the progress done by the partners involved in
the FUNGAR project.
Fungal Biofabrication
Biofabrication can be dened as the produc-
tion of complex living and non-living biologi-
cal products from raw materials such as living
cells or molecules. In the long term, biofabri-
cation can dramatically transform traditional
industries becoming a new paradigm for 21st
century manufacturing. A fast evolving and
growing branch of the biofabrication eld is
led by fungal-derived biomaterials and the re-
searchers behind them. At the current moment,
several private companies, public universities,
artistic and scientic organizations worldwide
have embraced fungal biofabrication as a subject
of study, research and development,7 including
MOGU S.r.l, Utrecht University, CITA based at
Royal Danish Academy and University of the
West of England, the four FUNGAR partners in
charge of the different fungal biofabrication
and functionalization efforts.
Fungal bio-based materials (Fig. 2), or short-
ly mycelium materials (MMs), are considered
an emerging family of environmentally friendly
composites and natural polymers of fungal ori-
gin mainly based on chitin and glucan fractions,
the main components of the fungal cell walls.8
Although the usage of fungal-sourced materials
is not new in human history,9 their production,
transformation and distribution following mod-
ern biotechnological and commercial process-
es is an industry in its very infancy.
MMs are currently commercialised as packag-
ing and construction elements, acoustic insu-
lation panels, furniture and decoration pieces,
automotive upholstery and also as leather-like
non-woven fabrics in the form of exible fun-
gal mats.10 In contrast to their petroleum-based
counterparts, MMs are fully biodegradable,
moreover their production process is simple
and economical, requiring a minimal knowl-
edge of fungal biology and a basic set of tools
normally used in other fungal biotechnological
activities, such kitchen fermentation processes
(e.g. tempeh, koji) or mushroom cultivation
operations.11
Most MMs listed above are normally manu-
factured through solid state fermentation (SSF)
methods involving the propagation of pure
fungal cultures on lignocellulosic substrates
such as sawdust, wood-chips, straws, hulls and
similar side-and waste-streams from agroin-
dustrial activities.12 The fungal hyphae grow on
these substrates, forming a brous matrix, the
mycelium, surrounding, covering and bind-
ing together all the substrate particles forming
a composite solid material that sometimes can
feel foamy. Once harvested, these composites
are normally dried using convection ovens to
stop fungal activity, action that aims to ensure
the preservation of the object by avoiding a to-
tal digestion or decomposition of the substrate.
Alternatively, liquid state fermentation (LSF)
techniques have been developed to produce
pure fungal biomass that can be further pro-
cessed into functional materials such as my-
celium-based papers and leather-like mats.13
Such LSF protocols have been adapted from
well-established fungal enzyme production
processes (e.g. penicillin, citric acid or myco-
protein production). Although these and other
Fig. 1. Fungal architecture in the post-apocaliptic world. Installation by Irina Petrova
(https://www.irina-petrova.com/). Printed with kind permission of Irina Petrova.
68 69
methodologies and applications for fungal bi-
ofabrication have been recently made availa-
ble, there is a long way to go regarding the im-
provement of the cultivation systems and the
mechanical properties of the materials, as well
as the overall biosafety of the art.
One of the challenges in FUNGAR will be to
grow a large living fungal structure in the me-
tre length
scale; more specically a self-support-
ing and self-sustaining biocomputing monolith.
This bio-structure
will serve as proof of concept
prior to implement complete fungal architec-
tures in the near future, such as housing and
other functional buildings. The fungal mono-
lith will consist of a superstructure of intercon-
nected fungal threads or mycelium growing
on a nutritive woody scaffold. The active living
threads of the fungal mycelium will carry in-
formation, sensing its immediate environment
and responding to it. This concept will result
in the development of new cultivation and
life-sustaining protocols for living fungal net-
works. The success of such an undertaking will
be measured by the active growth of the myce-
lium on selected substrates and its capacity to
remain alive, healthy and ultimately sentient to
the external conditions, whether it is provided
by the natural elements,
by touch or by electri-
cal stimuli directly applied by micro-controllers
and in silico computing units as described in
the following sections.
Conductive Functionalisation of Fungal
Mycelium
A mycelium consists of a network of hyphae
(Fig. 3a). Fungal hyphae are thread-like struc-
tures that can have a length in the centimetre
range under laboratory conditions. Hyphae
are highly polarised. They grow at their apex
and form lateral branches in sub-apical re-
gions (Fig. 3b). For instance, in the case of the
mold Aspergillus niger, growth occurs within
the rst 25 µm of the hyphae, while the rst
branch is made after 150 — 300 µm14 (Fig. 3c).
This polarisation is the result of developmental
and environmental cues.15 Hyphae of the most
species rich groups of the fungal kingdom,
the ascomycetes and the basidiomycetes, are
compartmentalised by cross walls called sep-
ta. These septa have pores that allow streaming
of cytosol and even organelles from one com-
partment to the other and from one hypha to an-
other. These septa are placed at regular distanc-
es. In the case of A. niger and the mushroom
forming fungus Schizophyllum commune, sep-
ta are placed every 50-100 µm16 (our data un-
published). By closing the pores,17 these fungi
can isolate hyphae or compartments enabling
Fig. 2. (a) Mycelium of a lamentous fungus growing on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA). (b) Antlers or
elongated primordia of Ganoderma lucidum seeking for light and higher oxygen concentrations. (c)
Composite MMs in form of bricks made by growing fungal mycelium on hemp shives. (d) Transverse
cut of a mycelium brick grown on cotton waste.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 3. An example of a fungal colony (a) and hypha (b) and its corresponding schematic diagram (c).
70 71
them to specialise.18 For instance, some hyphae
at the outer part of the mycelium of A. niger re-
lease proteins in the medium, while others are
more resistant to heat. Hyphae have a width
of about 2-10 µm. The cell wall is the outer
part of the hypha. It protects the underlying
plasma membrane, that in turn envelopes the
cytoplasm. The latter consists of a cytosol with
organelles like nuclei, mitochondria and vac-
uoles. Depending on the culture conditions
the cell wall thickness varies, but as a thumb
of rule it is about 0.20 µm19 while the plasma
membrane is about 15 nm thick20 (Fig. 3c).
A mycelium can be considered heterogene-
ous. Hyphae at the outer part of the colony
grow and colonise the substrate, while most
hyphae in the central zone of the mycelium do
not grow. In fact, they may have even lost their
cytoplasm. The heterogeneity of the myceli-
um as well as the heterogeneous structure of
the hypha along its length and width makes it
challenging to produce a conductive material
made from fungus, as a hypha is only as con-
ductive as the strongest resistor in said hypha
and not all hyphae are interconnected. Hyphae
of some fungi have been shown to be sensitive
to electrical elds, growing either toward or
away from the cathode or anode. In addition,
hyphal branching could be increased by an
electrical eld.21 These data show that fungal
hyphae, or parts thereof, show some degree of
conductivity. Current propagated along a hy-
pha did not leak into the medium surrounding
the mycelium,22 indicating that the cell wall
and cell membrane are good insulators as was
described previously.23 Thus, the cytosol is the
main conductive part of the hypha. Septa of
Neurospora crassa do not seem to exacerbate
voltage attenuation. However, the septa in this
fungus seem to be generally open, enabling
uninterrupted cytoplasmic ow.24 In contrast, a
high percentage of septa of other fungi like the
mushroom forming fungus S. commune or the
molds A. oryzae and A. niger are closed.25 The
question is whether this will also diminish cur-
rent ow in the hyphae. It should also be not-
ed that even in N. crassa a voltage attenuation
was observed of 70 % after 0.49 mm.26 This
would make fungal hyphae good resistors.
The current observed in N. crassa leads to the
prediction that conductivity of a mycelium
happens mostly in the form of electrolytic
conductivity. Indeed, when mycelium of the
fungus S. commune is dehydrated, material re-
sistance exceeds 20 MO compared to 1.5 MO
when the mycelium is still living (our unpub-
lished results). This is equal to the electrical re-
sistance that was previously found in the living
mycelium of the fungus Pleurotus ostreatus.27
The high electrical resistance of dehydrated
mycelium does not mean it cannot be used in
electrical appliances. High resistance materials
Fig. 4. Films of dead mycelium
that was chemically treated to
increase electrical conductivity.
The lm on the right-hand side has
been doped with Cu2+ and is six
times more conductive than the
lm on the left-hand side.
can be used as a capacitor (see above) or to
convert electrical energy to heat.
To expand the electrical functionality of fun-
gal mycelium it has to be modied (Fig. 4).
This can be achieved by functionalisation or
by changing the inherent properties of a my-
celium. The largest contributor to fungal my-
celium electrical resistance seems to be the
cell wall and the cell membrane.32 This can
be an advantageous property as an insulat-
ing outer layer can keep an electrical current
inside a hypha. A hypha would than need to
be modied in such a way that both the api-
cal and distal parts of a hypha are conductive.
A conductive living wire would be obtained
with an increase in cytoplasmic conductivity.
To increase cytoplasm electrolytic conductivi-
ty a fungus would need to be more tolerant to
high concentrations of conductive ions. Sever-
al fungal species display a high transition met-
al tolerance (our unpublished results). These
metals may be taken up and stored in special
organelles in the cytosol. In this case, they will
not likely increase conductivity signicantly. It
Fig. 5. Towards fungal computing. (a) Exemplar setup of recording electrical activity of mycelium of Pleurotus ostreatus.
(b) Example of Boolean gates implementation with computer model of spikes travelling in a fungal colony. Fragment of
electrical potential record in response to inputs (01), black dashed line, (10), red dotted line, (11), solid green line, entered
as impulses.28 (c) A biological scheme of a fragment of a fungal hypha of an ascomycete, where we can see septa and asso-
ciated Woronin bodies.29 (d) A scheme representing states of Woronin bodies: ‘0’ open, ‘1’ closed.30 (e) Examplar evolution
of a one-dimensional fungal automaton: the arrays of nite state machines is vertical and time increases from the left to the
right.31
72 73
may also be that the metals are pumped out of
the cell continuously, maintaining a higher but
non-toxic level in the cytosol. This would con-
tribute to the conductivity of the hyphae but its
extent needs to be determined. Finally, metals
may not enter the cytosol, but instead bind to
the cell wall. Binding of metals to the cell wall
may enable yet more electrical applications as
alternating conductive and insulating layers are
useful in transmission of high frequency electri-
cal signals (e.g. coaxial cables or high-voltage
cables).
Fungal computing
There are three ways of making sensing and
computing devices with fungi: morphological
computation, spikes based computation and
conventional computing with fungi as organic
electronic devices.
The morphological computation would repre-
sent data with spatial distribution of attractants
and repellents. A mycelium network devel-
oped in these gradient elds would represent a
result of the computation. This method is well
tested and proved to be successful in the im-
plementation of slime mould based computing
devices.33 The morphological computation is
slow because it is based on a physical growth
of the creatures. Thus we turned to a computa-
tion with electrical phenomena.
Whilst oscillation of electrical potential of fun-
gi have been reported once in 1970s34 and once
in 1990s35 by intra-cellular recording, only re-
cently did we discover that the oscillation can
be equally well recorded extra-cellularly by
inserting electrodes in fruit bodies36 or even in
a substrate colonised by fungi (Fig. 5a). Sever-
al modes of spiking have been discovered and
electrical responses of fungi to thermal and
chemical stimulation have been analysed.37 We
previously38 proposed that fungi Basidiomycet-
es can be used as computing devices: infor-
mation is represented by spikes of electrical
activity, a computation is implemented in a
mycelium network and an interface is realised
via fruit bodies. In an automaton model of a
fungal computer, we have shown how to im-
plement computation with fungi and demon-
strated that a structure of logical functions com-
puted is determined by mycelium geometry.39 In
the FUNGAR project, the automaton model
was perfected by using the FitzHugh–Nagumo
model to imitate propagation of excitation in
a single colony of Aspergillus niger. We de-
veloped techniques of encoding Boolean val-
ues by spikes of extracellular potential. We rep-
resented binary inputs by electrical impulses
on a pair of selected electrodes and record re-
sponses of the colony from sixteen electrodes.
We demonstrated that the colony can compute
by deriving sets of two-inputs-one-output log-
ical gates implementable (Fig. 5b).40 Ratios of
the gates found matches well the rations of the
gates discovered in other living systems, in the
case of the simulated fungal colony the ratios
was the gates were or 0.13, select 0.56, xor
0.04, not-and 0.11, and 0.15. Preparations for
implementation of fungal computing with real
living mycelium is underway. In the meantime,
we have developed an abstract model of fungal
computing based on some particular features
of mycelium— the fungal automata.41
Two types of fungal automata were proposed:
1D and 2D. In the 1D automata we studied
models of information dynamics on a single
hyphae.42 Such a lament is divided in compart-
ments (here also called cells) by septa (Fig. 5c).
These septa are invaginations of the cell wall
and their pores allow for th e ow of cytoplasm
between compartments and hyphae. The septal
pores of the fungal phylum of the Ascomycota
can be closed by organelles called Woronin
bodies. Septal closure is increased when the
septa become older and when exposed to stress
conditions. Thus, Woronin bodies act as infor-
mational ow valves (Fig. 5d). The 1D fungal au-
tomata is a binary state ternary neighbourhood
cellular automata, where every compartment
follows one of the elementary cellular automata
rules if its pores are open and either remains in
state ‘0’ (rst species of fungal automata) or its
previous state (second species of fungal autom-
ata) if its pores are closed. The Woronin bodies
closing the pores are also governed by autom-
aton rules. We also analysed a structure of the
composition space of cell-state transition and
pore-state transitions rules, complexity of fungal
automata with just a few Woronin bodies, and
exemplied several important local events in the
automaton dynamics (Fig. 5e).43
Inspired by the controllable compartmental-
isation within the mycelium of the ascomy-
cetous fungi, we designed 2D fungal autom-
ata: cellular automata where communication
between neighbouring cells can be blocked
on demand.44 We found that these automata
are computationally universal. This has been
proved by implementing sandpile cellular au-
tomata in 2D fungal automata. We reduced
the Monotone Circuit Value Problem to the
Fungal Automaton Prediction Problem, and
constructed families of wires, cross-overs and
gates to prove that the fungal automata are
P-complete.
Architectural design
As reported above in the “Fungal Biofabrica-
tion” section, MM’s have entered the building
industry through products such as acoustic
insulation panels and ooring tiles applica-
tions that permit their incorporation into con-
ventional construction approaches and building
systems. Speculative constructions, in which
MM’s play a central role in the construction
logic or building system, have been recently
demonstrated in the form of full-scale tempo-
rary constructions.45 Here, one of the primary
foci has been on exploring and exploiting their
structural (load-bearing) capacities. The study
of MM’s for application as primary construction
material for architectural structures is accelerat-
ing and diversifying in productive ways, for ex-
ample, nding intersection with 3D print tech-
nologies to achieve highly intricate geometries
that are not reliant on molds.46 In one specula-
tive design proposition, 3D printing becomes a
mechanism for exposing the contaminated soil
of an inner urban site and exploiting the reme-
diation capabilities of Pleurotus and Trametes.47
Such a proposition calls into question orthodox
understandings of what architecture is, what
roles it performs and what its objectives are
seeking new and expanded relationships that
promise a more ecologically engaged practice.
With its core objective of developing a living
construction material with computational ca-
pabilities from mycelium, the FUNGAR project
aims to contribute to this widening of architec-
tural scope with extension to design practices
and new construction logics.
The material basis of the FUNGAR project
presents many novel construction challenges
to the realisation of architectural outcomes.
Two key challenges are: 1) cultivating MM’s at
meter lengts scales; 2) achieving structural ca-
pacity with MM’s that are living and therefore
continually altering in their chemical and me-
chanical properties. To address these primary
challenges, we are investigating a novel con-
struction concept that employs stay-in-place
scaffolds produced using a sparse Kagome
weave pattern (Fig. 6).
Kagome is a resilient triaxial weave based on
a regular hexagonal lattice. It is also a very
versatile weave that allows complex morphol-
ogies to be realised through the judicious ap-
plication of simple
topological transformation
principles.48 These local changes of topology
referred to as singularities,
or lattice disclina-
tions – govern the production of double curva-
ture by generating out-of-plane stresses in the
weaver material. Kagome therefore provides a
principled approach to the production of scaf-
folds that can achieve architectural scales (me-
ter length), act as porous containers for MM ‘s
to grow within and provide structural capacity
for MM’s that are in continuous states of chem-
ical and mechanical transformation. This novel
construction method contributes a bio-hybrid
approach in which technical elements and liv-
ing complexes are synergistically combined to
achieve design intentions and support archi-
tectural objectives.
Working with living complexes offers an op-
portunity to enrich the palette of orthodox ar-
chitectural objectives. Tasks such as boundary
creating, framing, ltering and staging have
the potential to be reimagined by coupling
them with attributes such as growth, adapta-
tion and metabolism. The project’s aim, of pro-
ducing a living computing substrate that can
be used as construction material, will provide
novel capabilities embedded at the scale of
material. This presents the fascinating design
challenge of determining how the spatial dis-
tribution and organisation of that material can
inuence the computation – how the space of
an architecture assists in its computation. The
idea that spatial form languages emerge from
targeted objectives is familiar and perhaps most
74 75
tangible through structural performance, as in
the case of membrane architectures and com-
pression-only shell structures. The compelling
promise of working with actively computing
living substrates is that new form languages
and spatial characters will be invented. This
is quite tangible and achievable, for example,
through the informed design of geometries and
volumetric parameters of material to inuence
spikes based computation, or contained re-
gions of discrete mycelium networks organised
through differentiated structural elements to
create parallel computing units that can ex-
change information.
Discussion and future challenges
Despite a growing pool that estimates a total
of approx. 3.8 million species from which only
about 120.000 are currently identied,49 just a
few dozen basidiomycetes are currently being
used in the manufacturing of MMs. Therefore,
basic screening and selection efforts are re-
quired to identify more species with features of
interest. In parallel, new developments in fun-
gal genetic engineering using tools like CRIS-
PR50, or user-friendly cloning frameworks such
as the FungalBraid51, could lead to fast-proto-
typing of new metabolic pathways and pheno-
types, allowing new unforeseen properties and
functionalities. Moreover, such genetic engi-
neering efforts could lead to establishing new
symbiotic or co-protective relationships be-
tween fungi and other living beings, mimicking
relationships already observed in nature such
as the fungus-growing ants and termites, and
allowing the deployment of truly engineered
living materials that can survive on their own
and respond to external stimuli. Furthermore,
we can imagine that SSF, LSF and combined
(hybrid) manufacturing technologies will con-
tinue to be improved, providing fruitful syn-
ergistic results and making MMs manufacture
ready for mass production and functional ap-
plication across industries and households.
Acknowledgement
This project has received funding from the European Un-
ion’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
FET OPEN “Challenging current thinking” under grant
agreement No 858132.
1Unconventional Computing Laboratory, Depart-
ment of Computer Science, University of the West of
England, Bristol, UK.
2 Mogu S.r.l., Inarzo, Italy.
3 The Centre for Information Technology and Archi-
tecture, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation,
Copenhagen, Denmark.
4 Microbiology, Department of Biology, Utrecht Uni-
versity, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
5 Idem.
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Quantum Computing: Coping with Underpowered, Inaccurate, but Asto-
nishing Quantum Computers
Cristian S. Calude1
Why quantum computing?
Gordon E. Moore’s 1965 law is the empirical
observation stating that the number of transis-
tors on a chip doubles about every two years.
This prediction has dened the trajectory of
computing technology and, in some ways, it
marked the progress itself.
In early 1990s talks about the eventual de-
cay of Moore’s law lead to the question: what
happens when Moore’s Law (inevitably?) ends?
Among various possibilities, the advance of
new models of computation, called uncon-
ventional,2 was one. At that time there was a
widespread belief that the P vs. NP problem
currently still open will be solved in the
negative before the end of the century. This
motivated the need to nd fast algorithms to
solve NP problems, a computational challenge
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Fungal Diversity Revisited: 2.2 to 3.8 Million Species, Page 1 of 2 Abstract The question of how many species of Fungi there are has occasioned much speculation, with figures mostly posited from around half a million to 10 million, and in one extreme case even a sizable portion of the spectacular number of 1 trillion. Here we examine new evidence from various sources to derive an updated estimate of global fungal diversity. The rates and patterns in the description of new species from the 1750s show no sign of approaching an asymptote and even accelerated in the 2010s after the advent of molecular approaches to species delimitation. Species recognition studies of (semi-)cryptic species hidden in morpho-species complexes suggest a weighted average ratio of about an order of magnitude for the number of species recognized after and before such studies. New evidence also comes from extrapolations of plant:fungus ratios, with information now being generated from environmental sequence studies, including comparisons of molecular and fieldwork data from the same sites. We further draw attention to undescribed species awaiting discovery in biodiversity hot spots in the tropics, little-explored habitats (such as lichen-inhabiting fungi), and material in collections awaiting study. We conclude that the commonly cited estimate of 1.5 million species is conservative and that the actual range is properly estimated at 2.2 to 3.8 million. With 120,000 currently accepted species, it appears that at best just 8%, and in the worst case scenario just 3%, are named so far. Improved estimates hinge particularly on reliable statistical and phylogenetic approaches to analyze the rapidly increasing amount of environmental sequence data.
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