When people see mushrooms sprouting out of the ground, they may not realize that those mushrooms are connected to one another by an underground network of root-like structures. Those "roots" are known as hyphae, and a network of them is known as mycelium.

When grown and harvested under the right conditions, mycelium takes on the form of a tough material that can be used as vegan leather, soundproofing material or packing foam, among other things. That brings us to the mycocrete, which is being developed at Britain's Newcastle University.

It's a paste made up of mycelium spores and grains which those spores can feed on, along with ingredients such as paper powder, paper fiber clumps, water, glycerin and xanthan gum, that help bulk it up.