Cordyceps militaris, commonly known as "chong cao hua" in China, is a fungus belonging to the Cordycipitaceae family and the genus Cordyceps. It is commonly used as both a food ingredient and a medicinal herb, and its mycelium can also be used in material manufacturing.

A research team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has established a living textile material platform with Cordyceps militaris mycelium as the structural scaffold. The platform is characterized by its formability, processability and functionalizability, while retaining biological responsiveness. The team successfully created a "living" dress using this platform, an achievement that offers promising new insights for the design of adaptive, sustainable living materials.

The researchers observed in their experiments that Cordyceps militaris can form relatively uniform mycelial balls rich in fibrous mycelium in liquid culture. These mycelial balls can naturally connect into sheets after filtration and drying. They used Cordyceps militaris as the material base and constructed the mycelial balls into controllable two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials. To prevent the mycelium sheets from becoming brittle after drying, they were subjected to plasticization treatment to make them soft, so that they could be folded, cut and sewn.

A thin rope made by twisting four narrow strips of mycelium into a single strand can bear a weight of one kilogram, and is both flexible and structurally strong. The treated material has a texture closer to that of soft non-woven fabric or lightweight leather-like materials, without the "mushroom smell" usually found in previous fungus-based fabrics.

At the application level, this material can be applied in scenarios with controllable usage periods such as biodegradable packaging, artistic textiles and temporary display materials. It is expected to expand to responsive textiles, functional protective surfaces, environmental materials and some biomedical materials.