Shrooms From Outer Space
By Neal Anthwal
It is an oft-quoted cliché that the only survivors of a nuclear war will be cockroaches, but now it seems that they’ll be joined by fungi. And not only that, the fungi will be thriving, as researchers at Yeshiva University have recently discovered fungi that are able to “eat” radiation.During a web browsing session one day, Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova, the lead author on the study, discovered that robots used to investigate the Chernobyl reactor were covered in black spores. These spores belonged to fungi that were rich in melanin, the ubiquitous pigment found in everything from bacteria to you and I. So Dr. Dadachova’s group decided to chuck some radiation at some fungus in the lab and see what happened.
Their work, published in the open access journal PLoS One, found that, following exposure to ionising radiation, metabolic activity is raised in a fungus which naturally produces melanin. Not only that, fungus that had been induced to make melanin also showed increased metabolic activity following irradiation when compared to non-melanized forms.
The theory is that melanin in these fungi is acting a little like chlorophyll in photosynthesis, but utilising the energy from radiation rather than light. And Dadachova thinks this property may be useful in our future sojourns into deep space. "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space,” she reasons, “Astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets".
Mmmm, tasty, tasty space ‘shrooms.
Imagine it. You’re an astronaut, off to the depths of space to boldly go where no man has been before, and every meal is fungus; fungus for breakfast, fungus for lunch, and – oh, guess what - fungus for dinner.
Since the time it would take to cross to get to even the nearest star is so great, a whole food culture would have to develop around space fungus. And not just any fungus, no, this is radioactive fungus. Does this mean that the settler from earth on new planets will be imbued with the power of mushroom, as happens in any comic book when people eat, are bitten by, or generally interact with anything radioactive? No, but they’re quite likely to be infertile, or to have died of radiation sickness or cancer; neither of which is ideal for planet colonisation.
Back on earth, Dadachova hypothesises that all melanin is capable of capturing radioactive energy in this way. But melanin and radiation are all over the place. Is the melanin in my skin producing energy for me, as well as protecting me from the harmful effects of radiation? If so, is that energy at all significant? How long before some so-called nutritionalists start selling energy boosting melanin supplements activated with a handy pocket-sized lump of radium?
Get more from Neal on his page.
Or you can find out more about fungi...
Mushrooms the size of trees
Magic mushrooms
Or space...
Space girls get astro-naughty
Custard seen from space
Image: W/Marcus Beltman
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