It's a meme pic, so I'm just wildly gesticulating and making giant assumptions here: I doubt it's the "mushroom" fruiting body that's doing anything in this research. It's almost certainly the mycelium or we're dealing with something like slime molds or yeast which don't produce mushrooms at all.
Yes I made this comment without reading the rest of the thread or hunting down the story. Sue me.
Juffo-Wup is the power of life... hot warmth in the cold Void. It flows through all things, binding them together, making them one. You are Non-Juffo-Wup, you cannot understand.