I believe the stuff is very, very similar to what you get in mushrooms. My favorite in this regard is young Ganoderma tsugae (= almost the same as reishi), since it is readily available where I live. The mature shroom is tough but young, white specimens are soft and you can chew on them for a long time, like a sort of a sweetish gum. In some ways, shrooms are similar to animals. There is some research on medicinal mushrooms proteoglycans and polysaccharides, the stuff animal extracellular matrix is made of too.
PS oh! I just remembered there was a dressing made out of a pounded bracket shroom and it was used for wounds back in 17-18 CC -? That was the same shroom of which 'felt' hats were made of too. But I think that different shrooms have somewhat different
additional properties in this regard. For example, the 'slime' from a larch bolete has many fantastic properties, from antibacterial to supportive of skin and prob. extracellular matrix. Again, this is my personal observation. These mycorrhizal shrooms are not well studied, because you can't grow them on demand like the shroomies that grow on trees.
Edited by xEva, 30 May 2013 - 01:54 PM.