Slashdot Mirror
Radiation-eating Fungi
SEWilco writes "Fungus growths have been found in many extreme environments, including the Chernobyl reactor walls. Some fungi have been found whose growth is enhanced by radiation. I wonder if someone saved samples of the MIR-eating fungi."
not an extreme environment you insensitive clod
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Eventually, the bacteria will evolve into this.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Radiation is eating Fungi? I think you might have wanted: "Radiation-eating Fungi," especially in a headline. Consider: "Insect eating plants."
I salute our new radioactive overlords!
Do we need a giant fungus, among us?
Without the hyphen between "radiation" and "eating", the title means the exact opposite of its intent.
This is a huge crisis. If radiation keeps eating fungi at this rate we'll have no mushrooms left by 2040!
Fungus Amongus!
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
I'M IN UR REACTOR EATIN UR FUELZ! Now to be serious, radiation resistant bacteria are also known. If mankind ever wipes itself out with nukes, it's comforting to know the world won't be a totally dead place. Everything will start all over, and who knows what will happen next time.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
Remember, Chernobyl was in Soviet Russia.
paintball
First off, IAAMP (I am a medical physicsist). This is sort of radiation-induced growth stimulus was actually studied extensively in the first half of the 20th century. A great reference for this behavior is a paper published in Human & Experimental Toxicology called "Radiation hormesis: its historical foundations as a biological hypothesis" by Calbrese and Baldwin, which examines the dozens of studies examining the effects of low dose radiation on plants, fungi, and insects - fascinating stuff. Over 2/3 of the studies in this time period showed increased growth with radiation, while the other 1/3 used relatively high doses (which is known to have net detrimental effects). People were actually interested in putting radioactive isotopes in fertilizer to encourage crop growth, but results weren't great and the A-bomb happened... and we all know where the public's perception of radiation went after that. I've got a PDF of that paper if anyone is interested (the online version requires a subscription, I believe).
Second off, I apparently cannot spell "physicist" or the primary author's name, Calabrese. Guess I got caught up in the excitement of my first post ever :)
I thought this would be something interesting like fungus that ate and destroyed radiation. It would be great for getting rid of nuclear waste. I don't think such a thing could actually exist, but I'm not a nuclear physicist, or a biologist, so what do I know.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
fungi eat you!
...
Or your spaceship
Haven't I seen this with phazon before?
so if i don't shower, that means i will be saved from this horrible cell phone and wifi radiation i keep hearing about?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sorry this is different than the radiation eating fungi/plants absorbing UV re photosynthesis effect? I realize this is changing the structure of the melanin, but isn't that pretty much the same thing that happens in photosynthesis? Light interacts with a chemical changes its properties, energy is stored and made useful to the cell. Looks like in this case it is changing the electrical properties of the system for the organism which aids its growth not direct energy.
Lets say something goes from opaque to transparent under prolonged radiation exposure, now fungi can get more light than before, and grow better, or at least thrive had a different depth in the water table, not really surprising. Really all they did was show that melanin's properties change with radiation in the favor of the organism.
The link for mir-eating fungi goes to an old slashdot story which itself points to a dead link. A usable link to the original story is here: http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_fungu s_000727.html
Run-away growth can lead to starvation, so the fungus might normally hold back a bit. If weird damage is occuring though, the situation changes. Doing nothing leads to quick death; reproducing fills the voids left by those who've died.
...I can imagine it to be a "fun guy" to be with...
Your either a troll, or an idiot.
Will I turn into Fungus-man? Or will I suddenly grow twice my size? Or will I get an extra life?
From the article:
"Irradiated melanin manifested a 4-fold increase in its capacity to reduce NADH relative to non-irradiated melanin."
Sorry! NADH is the reduced form, NAD+ is the oxidized form. NAD+ can be reduced to NADH. NADH can't be further reduced by organisms.
I'll leave it to others to find the additional flaws.
Radioactive isotopes can emit alpha particles, which are helium nuclei, beta particles, which are an electron emitted from the nucleus when a neutron changes into a proton and an electron, or gamma particles (more accurately rays) which have no mass or charge and are a form of electromagnetic radiation. The closest thing to what you are suggesting would be an ionized hydrogen atom, which is simply a proton. This, however, is not a form of radiation; it's just, well, hydrogen.
...the radiation-emitting fungi.
I'm not saying this sort of research shouldn't be done. However, the mere fact that radiation is capable of stimulating growth for some organisms isn't too impressive. Look at any plants that contain chlorophyll. That's "radiation stimulated growth" right there. Yes, sunlight is a form of radiation, too.
I for one welcome our new mutant fungi overlords.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
And the icing on the cake is someone modded him insightful.
When I was working as an intern at a nuclear power plant ten years ago, they were in the process of dismantling a decommissioned reactor block. One of the unexpected issues that popped up was having massive algae growth in the old reactors pressure vessel (highly radioactive due to having been activated over the course of a few decades of use).
So what do you do with the fungi after they "eat" the radiation? You get a bunch of radioactive fungi. It's not as though the fungi break down beta particles.
signature pending slashdot approval
You get a bunch of radioactive fungi.
Yes. And that's much better than having a really big heap of radioactive soil, because the fungi have a smaller volume and are therefore much easier to dispose of.
This is not "radiation eating", this is "radiation enabling".
Eating radiation implies that the radiation is removed or converted. There is no mention of that.
That's the same like saying "solar rays eating fungi discovered".
this comment gets a Score:3, Interesting?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
oh man, maybe i am notorious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm trying some new CNC3 strategies...
Thank you, you just made my day !
(And, as a side note, I'm sure such groups do indeed exist somewhere in the bible belt... see SIG)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As the name could show you, it's a physicist (someone with a PhD in physics) working in the medical fields (his colleagues are MD, just like me).
There's a field of medicine where we needs the a lot, for exemple : the nuclear medicine.
High radiations are something that kills, as the MP said before. Therefor they can be focalised and targeted to kill cancer cells (Yes. Friking "nucular death rays" !
It's the physicist's job to design the model that the software use to predict how to irradiate the targeted tumor without irradiating too much neighboring healthy organs. It's also he's who is in charge of the callibration of the machine etc.
Other example : low-level radiation are mostly harmless. but they can be detected. Thus there's a whole class of examinations that can be done by ingesting/inhalating/injecting some radioactive material, and then make pictures/filming the radioactive emission to 'see' where the radioactive product went (for exemple using a radioactive gaz, to see how gaz circulated inside the lung. That's part of an examination called "pulmonary scintigraphy"). The doctor is mostly only taking care to read and interpret the produced pictures. Almost everything else (production of radioactive material, machine callibration, etc.) is supervised by physicists (and the actual manual job done by technicians).
etc.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I can't find the citations easily, but I have seen that there are suggestions that chemical processes may be able to moderate nuclear reactions.
Oh noetry!
Before you know it there'll be a big forest of this stuff emitting deadly lung-rotting spores, and the forest will be home to a legion of giant, deadly, and extremely vindictive insects...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
That last one is actually true.
Something to do with having to take the mains off the line, I believe?
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Melanin is the class of pigments that makes skin dark. It's long been known that it blocks UV radiation, hence the lower incidence of skin cancer in darker-skinned populations.
The interesting thing here is that fungal cells with melanin in them apparently show increased enzyme activity when exposed to ionizing radiation. If I read the paper right, the melanin absorbs the radiation, giving it energy to transfer an electron to NADH, a biological catalyst important in metabolism, which in turn boosts the metabolic rate so the fungus can grow faster.
Incidentally, the fungus is not actually feeding on radioactive particles, but being exposed to the radiation helps it grow faster. The introduction to the paper states that fungi can withstand far higher radiation exposure than they get in places like Chernobyl or the upper atmosphere. The implication is that those fungi that have melanin developed the ability to grow it, not because they need the protection, but because it helps them metabolize.
In this way the melanin seems to serve a surprisingly similar role for metabolism as chlorophyl does for photosynthesis, although perhaps with less reliance on the part of the organism.
By the way, thanks to the submitter for linking to the paper. It's so much more useful than a typical news article.
Today's slashdot word of the day: Cladosporium sphaerospermum - an intrinsically melanized fungus found in abundance at the site of nuclear accident in Chernobyl which produces melanin in the variety of growth conditions - from nutrient rich medium to almost complete starvation. (courtesy of the paper).
that implies some sort of race or contest with a predetermined outcome. NO, it will continue with a new set of parameters.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This kinda reminds me of Metroid for some reason. :)
Let's not forget about neutrons too. Free neutrons tend to do interesting things when they combine with other atomic nuclei. However, free neutrons are not stable and have a half-life of about 15 minutes, at which time they disintegrate to a proton and an electron (plus some energy) and leave you with, yep, hydrogen.
...It wouldn't be +1 Funny.
paintball