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Radiotrophic fungi are growing inside Chernobyl nuclear power plant and use radiation as alternative source of energy for a process similar to photosynthesis. R

by fbn79 7y ago

Radiotrophic fungi are growing inside Chernobyl nuclear power plant and use radiation as alternative source of energy for a process similar to photosynthesis. REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus

Shivetya 7y ago
HN discussion[1] about why plants do not get Cancer was interesting to me and somewhat related to this story on mold. So I guess my question is, is there a mold that would be beneficial to have grow in such a confined environment? I assume the ventilation system can filter out the spores, are astronauts by way of the enclosed environment subject to more exposure to spores than on Earth or are the numbers much lower by volume? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321463
- ejolto 7y ago
  Fungi are not plants though. Fungi are actually more closely related to animals than plants [1][2]. Plants not getting cancer is irrelevant when talking about cancer rate in mold/fungi. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote
- defterGoose 7y ago
  If you're suggesting that having these types of organisms around would benefit humans by absorbing harmful radiation, it wouldn't work that way.
  - vokep 7y ago
    Is there a reason why this is nonsensical? It seems reasonable with the right properties. If there were some sort of organism that would attract to radiation and grow around, perhaps that could be at a significant enough size that it actually absorbs significant radiation providing protection.
    - natechols 7y ago
      You can get the same effect much more easily by shielding with water.
- jerf 7y ago
  If you're asking about useful things to grow, hypothetically, we could process CO2 into O2 using plants. However, at our current level of technology I rather suspect it would require a lot more space than the space station has, because we couldn't pack the requisite infrastructure in a very tight space right now. In Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky", where ramships travel at sub-light speeds between the stars in the story, they use algae (IIRC, if not that some other similar thing, as opposed to big plants) to process CO2. The process doesn't just run in one big vat, though; it has to run in multiple partitions, because it's a routine event that a mutation in a particular partition manages to work out how to more efficiently convert the provided resources into reproduction, at the cost of putting out less O2 or putting out other undesirable gasses. It's a routine maintenance job for them to look at the output, take some gene sequence samples, and dump & sterilize sub-par partitions and restock them from the other cells. I give this as an idea of the potential problems we'd face right now. Even if the tech to do that is a routine design job today, it's still not something we have (AFAIK) and would need time to be tested, and the result would be, as I said, quite bulky for some time (for instance, if you work out the necessary volumes, IIRC it's not like you get "20 cc of algae per astronaut" or some similarly dainty value; it takes quite a bit of algae to put out enough oxygen for our high-energy metabolisms).
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  Fungi accumulate radiation by nature, so seems logical they can repair themselves. Remember the chernobyl warning to not collect them in hot areas in the forrests for years.. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ef/b2/b2/efb2b21b116aa6ff7e9ce74195afc628.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ef/b2/b2/efb2b21b116aa6ff7e9c... Mold also grows in wet spots, that are likely to correlate with natural higher radiation (radon) - meaning cavesystems etc.
athenot 7y ago
Now being discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342750 (which I happened to see first). Might be worth combining threads.
moneytalks 7y ago
Could fungi be used as shielding?

by fbn79 7y ago

Shivetya 7y ago

HN discussion[1] about why plants do not get Cancer was interesting to me and somewhat related to this story on mold. So I guess my question is, is there a mold that would be beneficial to have grow in such a confined environment? I assume the ventilation system can filter out the spores, are astronauts by way of the enclosed environment subject to more exposure to spores than on Earth or are the numbers much lower by volume? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321463

ejolto 7y ago
Fungi are not plants though. Fungi are actually more closely related to animals than plants [1][2]. Plants not getting cancer is irrelevant when talking about cancer rate in mold/fungi. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote
defterGoose 7y ago
If you're suggesting that having these types of organisms around would benefit humans by absorbing harmful radiation, it wouldn't work that way.
- vokep 7y ago
  Is there a reason why this is nonsensical? It seems reasonable with the right properties. If there were some sort of organism that would attract to radiation and grow around, perhaps that could be at a significant enough size that it actually absorbs significant radiation providing protection.
  - natechols 7y ago
    You can get the same effect much more easily by shielding with water.
jerf 7y ago
If you're asking about useful things to grow, hypothetically, we could process CO2 into O2 using plants. However, at our current level of technology I rather suspect it would require a lot more space than the space station has, because we couldn't pack the requisite infrastructure in a very tight space right now. In Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky", where ramships travel at sub-light speeds between the stars in the story, they use algae (IIRC, if not that some other similar thing, as opposed to big plants) to process CO2. The process doesn't just run in one big vat, though; it has to run in multiple partitions, because it's a routine event that a mutation in a particular partition manages to work out how to more efficiently convert the provided resources into reproduction, at the cost of putting out less O2 or putting out other undesirable gasses. It's a routine maintenance job for them to look at the output, take some gene sequence samples, and dump & sterilize sub-par partitions and restock them from the other cells. I give this as an idea of the potential problems we'd face right now. Even if the tech to do that is a routine design job today, it's still not something we have (AFAIK) and would need time to be tested, and the result would be, as I said, quite bulky for some time (for instance, if you work out the necessary volumes, IIRC it's not like you get "20 cc of algae per astronaut" or some similarly dainty value; it takes quite a bit of algae to put out enough oxygen for our high-energy metabolisms).
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Fungi accumulate radiation by nature, so seems logical they can repair themselves. Remember the chernobyl warning to not collect them in hot areas in the forrests for years.. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ef/b2/b2/efb2b21b116aa6ff7e9ce74195afc628.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ef/b2/b2/efb2b21b116aa6ff7e9c... Mold also grows in wet spots, that are likely to correlate with natural higher radiation (radon) - meaning cavesystems etc.

athenot 7y ago

Now being discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342750 (which I happened to see first). Might be worth combining threads.

moneytalks 7y ago

Could fungi be used as shielding?