Vitamin D/nutritional information on fungi

[Joe Skulan]

I've been reading papers on ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) in wild
mushrooms. Most of the information is on mushrooms from Finland or
East Asia; I've not been able to find any published information on
ergocalciferol in North American mushrooms. I'm thinking of analyzing
a bunch of them myself, and comparing fresh mushrooms with ones that
have been sun dried (which should be enriched in vitamin D), but I
don't want to reinvent the wheel. Is anyone aware of any data?

More generally, there appears to be a general lack of any kind of
nutritional analysis of most wild mushrooms. I can't find anything at
all on morels, for example. As far as I can tell, nutritional
information on commercially sold wild mushroom packages seems just to
be copied from analysis of A. bisporus or shiitake. Am I missing
something?

Finally, I thought I'd just throw this out there: the whole business
of animal like substances in fungi interests me (animals possibly
being, phylogenetically speaking, just highly modified fungi), and
makes me wonder about what else might be in them. Do fungi produce any
other 'animal' sterols (like testosterone or estrogen) or bioactive
peptides like oxytocin?

Cheers,

Joe Skulan