5 ms·

Fungi that eats radiation found inside Chernobyl reactor

66 points by jelliclesfarm 7y ago

tomaszs 7y ago
With all problems we have radioactive fungi is what we need the most
madaxe_again 7y ago
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus, which I’m guessing is the source article for this piece. Not really that much of a “shocker”, as the research is decades in at this point.
- outworlder 7y ago
  Yeah, discovered all the way back in 1991.
- ISL 7y ago
  It is still really cool. As a physicist, with a lot of contacts to nuclear physics, I can't recall hearing about any biological systems (aside from humans) making deliberate beneficial use of gamma radiation. With sufficient evolution, one could imagine a biological system that could sustain itself for long durations in spaceflight with only a gamma source for "food". Such an organism could travel far and wide.
  - rbritton 7y ago
    That's a big part of the storyline of The Expanse book series.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    I was thinking something similar: Can we farm this organism? Could intergenerational ships of humans travel between stars, if they had gamma based farms?
  - peter_d_sherman 7y ago
    Same line of thought here.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  If you read the article they linked to the source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ Also, it's shocking to me, did you already know about this? After some research we don't seem to know everything about this fungi and it seems to have amazing potential for possible nuclear waste disposal.
  - brokensegue 7y ago
    They don't eat the radioactive material. They eat the radiation. I don't think this helps disposal.
  - onceUponADime 7y ago
    This funig does not diggest the radioactive material. It diggest the rays produced by radioactive material decaying. The radioation emitted is similar to light for a plant for this fungi. If this fungi diggests radioactive material, my guess would be, that it would die- surrounded by its decendants, who would fare pretty well in the sunshine of their spore creator.
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      You could possibly surround the material with the fungi to naturally absorb the gamma radiation. Also some genetic modification to the fungi may yield interesting results.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        Lead would work a lot better.
        s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        Lead doesn't convert it to chemical energy. Seems like a waste if we can use the decay... Also, this fungi could be infinitely cheaper and much greener than lead...
- xyst 7y ago
  The source is known to be dubious, are we really still surprised at the clickbait article title and lack of actual research?
  - jshevek 7y ago
    Which source is dubious, and why is it dubious?
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    You didn't read the article and Fox is a fine source, I see CNN on here all the time. Both lean Republican and Democrat respectively according to non-bias fact checking sites. To the point of the lack of research, they clearly link the source in the article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ Also I don't see how the title is clickbaity...
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > Also I don't see how the title is clickbaity... Because the entirely true "Plant that eats radiation found near Chernobyl" would be similarly accurate.
bxio 7y ago
Is this our version of the protomolecule? When do we send Joe Miller to investigate?
ceejayoz 7y ago
Plants "eat" radiation, too. It's a flashy headline, but fairly meaningless.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > fairly meaningless Plants photosynthesise visible light. These fungi “use the pigment melanin to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy for growth” [1]. That’s a meaningful difference. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The next line in that paragraph: > This proposed mechanism may be similar to anabolic pathways for the synthesis of reduced organic carbon (e.g., carbohydrates) in phototrophic organisms, which convert photons from visible light with pigments such as chlorophyll whose energy is then used in photolysis of water to generate usable chemical energy (as ATP) in photophosphorylation or photosynthesis. Again, I don't find it surprising that an organism has managed to metabolize a form of EM radiation, as plants serve as a handy example of evolving to do precisely that. Perhaps the ionizing nature of Chernobyl's radiation helps generate more selection pressure towards it, even.
snapetom 7y ago
Tangentially related to this, I remember in the late 80's hearing about bacteria that ate nuclear material, drastically reducing the half life of plutonium. I assume that research went nowhere since thirty years later, we don't hear about it. Does anyone remember this or know anything about it?
- rleigh 7y ago
  Nothing can reduce radioactive half-life. It's a constant value for each isotope. If you found a way, you would have rewritten physics as we know it.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
    Technically you could add or remove neucleons to change which isotope (or element) you've got, which would change the half-life. EG running a nuclear reactor changes the half-life of the fuel rod, by changing the materials in the fuel rod.
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      Now we just need to engineer ourselves an organism incorporating a nuclear reactor. Are there any absolute showstoppers thermodynamics wise that would prevent such a thing?
  - foxyv 7y ago
    Unlike many other isotopes, if you can concentrate plutonium you can reduce its half life dramatically while increasing radioactivity.
driverdan 7y ago
I flagged this because it's garbage reporting on something that was published in 2007[1] and 2008[2]. 1: https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070521/full/news070521-5.html https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070521/full/news070521-5.ht... 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/
- jshevek 7y ago
  I see a great deal of garbage reporting on HN that doesn't get removed. I was previously unaware of this fungi and I appreciate the discussion occuring.
pcj-github 7y ago
Please don't post articles from foxnews. They target lowball intelligence; I find it insulting to the hackernews community.
- classicsnoot 7y ago
  Can you define "lowball intelligence?" That seems like a bigoted term and probably violates HN rules.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    Yes, I flagged that bigoted comment, as it is the kind of comment that encourages flame wars.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    ‘Lowball intelligence’ I am going to assume that was directed towards me. I posted this link. Because I have a ‘farm’ suffix instead of ‘GitHub’ suffix with handle. I picked this handle to apply to YC twice for Ag robotics. And I am proud of it. And was told that there is no money in Ag. That’s ok. We..lowball intelligences..will continue to feed everyone irrespective of who they are or what they do. Or whatever high intelligence reading list that needs perusing. Please carry on. The world needs its next Tinder crushing app. Because. Priorities.
    - classicsnoot 7y ago
      I might be a lowballer myself. I'm not a fan of Fox News, or any legacy media for that matter, but I take umbrage to the idea that the source dictates the recipient. CNN consistently inflates and mislabels information to fit a narrative, but that doesn't mean the people watching are by necessity failing at reasoning. Keep posting. The bar for HN is "interesting topics." This absolutely qualified. Also, keep the faith. Food is the great leveller. The world will probably come back around to appreciating those that give it to us.
- dang 7y ago
  On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality. Most major media sites are penalized on HN, but most also produce the occasionally interesting article. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
lioeters 7y ago
This reminds me of the mycologist Paul Stamets' proposal to use radiotrophic fungi to clean up Fukushima. https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediate-radiation-fukushima https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediat... Further on "mycoremediation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation My biased view is that fungi-based technology is an under-appreciated field with great potential for growth and wide range of applications.

66 points by jelliclesfarm 7y ago

With all problems we have radioactive fungi is what we need the most

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus, which I’m guessing is the source article for this piece. Not really that much of a “shocker”, as the research is decades in at this point.

outworlder 7y ago
Yeah, discovered all the way back in 1991.
ISL 7y ago
It is still really cool. As a physicist, with a lot of contacts to nuclear physics, I can't recall hearing about any biological systems (aside from humans) making deliberate beneficial use of gamma radiation. With sufficient evolution, one could imagine a biological system that could sustain itself for long durations in spaceflight with only a gamma source for "food". Such an organism could travel far and wide.
- rbritton 7y ago
  That's a big part of the storyline of The Expanse book series.
- jshevek 7y ago
  I was thinking something similar: Can we farm this organism? Could intergenerational ships of humans travel between stars, if they had gamma based farms?
- peter_d_sherman 7y ago
  Same line of thought here.
s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
If you read the article they linked to the source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ Also, it's shocking to me, did you already know about this? After some research we don't seem to know everything about this fungi and it seems to have amazing potential for possible nuclear waste disposal.
- brokensegue 7y ago
  They don't eat the radioactive material. They eat the radiation. I don't think this helps disposal.
- onceUponADime 7y ago
  This funig does not diggest the radioactive material. It diggest the rays produced by radioactive material decaying. The radioation emitted is similar to light for a plant for this fungi. If this fungi diggests radioactive material, my guess would be, that it would die- surrounded by its decendants, who would fare pretty well in the sunshine of their spore creator.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    You could possibly surround the material with the fungi to naturally absorb the gamma radiation. Also some genetic modification to the fungi may yield interesting results.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Lead would work a lot better.
      - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        Lead doesn't convert it to chemical energy. Seems like a waste if we can use the decay... Also, this fungi could be infinitely cheaper and much greener than lead...
xyst 7y ago
The source is known to be dubious, are we really still surprised at the clickbait article title and lack of actual research?
- jshevek 7y ago
  Which source is dubious, and why is it dubious?
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  You didn't read the article and Fox is a fine source, I see CNN on here all the time. Both lean Republican and Democrat respectively according to non-bias fact checking sites. To the point of the lack of research, they clearly link the source in the article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ Also I don't see how the title is clickbaity...
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > Also I don't see how the title is clickbaity... Because the entirely true "Plant that eats radiation found near Chernobyl" would be similarly accurate.

bxio 7y ago

Is this our version of the protomolecule? When do we send Joe Miller to investigate?

ceejayoz 7y ago

Plants "eat" radiation, too. It's a flashy headline, but fairly meaningless.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> fairly meaningless Plants photosynthesise visible light. These fungi “use the pigment melanin to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy for growth” [1]. That’s a meaningful difference. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  The next line in that paragraph: > This proposed mechanism may be similar to anabolic pathways for the synthesis of reduced organic carbon (e.g., carbohydrates) in phototrophic organisms, which convert photons from visible light with pigments such as chlorophyll whose energy is then used in photolysis of water to generate usable chemical energy (as ATP) in photophosphorylation or photosynthesis. Again, I don't find it surprising that an organism has managed to metabolize a form of EM radiation, as plants serve as a handy example of evolving to do precisely that. Perhaps the ionizing nature of Chernobyl's radiation helps generate more selection pressure towards it, even.

snapetom 7y ago

Tangentially related to this, I remember in the late 80's hearing about bacteria that ate nuclear material, drastically reducing the half life of plutonium. I assume that research went nowhere since thirty years later, we don't hear about it. Does anyone remember this or know anything about it?

rleigh 7y ago
Nothing can reduce radioactive half-life. It's a constant value for each isotope. If you found a way, you would have rewritten physics as we know it.
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
  Technically you could add or remove neucleons to change which isotope (or element) you've got, which would change the half-life. EG running a nuclear reactor changes the half-life of the fuel rod, by changing the materials in the fuel rod.
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    Now we just need to engineer ourselves an organism incorporating a nuclear reactor. Are there any absolute showstoppers thermodynamics wise that would prevent such a thing?
- foxyv 7y ago
  Unlike many other isotopes, if you can concentrate plutonium you can reduce its half life dramatically while increasing radioactivity.

driverdan 7y ago

I flagged this because it's garbage reporting on something that was published in 2007[1] and 2008[2]. 1: https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070521/full/news070521-5.html https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070521/full/news070521-5.ht... 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/

jshevek 7y ago
I see a great deal of garbage reporting on HN that doesn't get removed. I was previously unaware of this fungi and I appreciate the discussion occuring.

pcj-github 7y ago

Please don't post articles from foxnews. They target lowball intelligence; I find it insulting to the hackernews community.

classicsnoot 7y ago
Can you define "lowball intelligence?" That seems like a bigoted term and probably violates HN rules.
- jshevek 7y ago
  Yes, I flagged that bigoted comment, as it is the kind of comment that encourages flame wars.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  ‘Lowball intelligence’ I am going to assume that was directed towards me. I posted this link. Because I have a ‘farm’ suffix instead of ‘GitHub’ suffix with handle. I picked this handle to apply to YC twice for Ag robotics. And I am proud of it. And was told that there is no money in Ag. That’s ok. We..lowball intelligences..will continue to feed everyone irrespective of who they are or what they do. Or whatever high intelligence reading list that needs perusing. Please carry on. The world needs its next Tinder crushing app. Because. Priorities.
  - classicsnoot 7y ago
    I might be a lowballer myself. I'm not a fan of Fox News, or any legacy media for that matter, but I take umbrage to the idea that the source dictates the recipient. CNN consistently inflates and mislabels information to fit a narrative, but that doesn't mean the people watching are by necessity failing at reasoning. Keep posting. The bar for HN is "interesting topics." This absolutely qualified. Also, keep the faith. Food is the great leveller. The world will probably come back around to appreciating those that give it to us.
dang 7y ago
On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality. Most major media sites are penalized on HN, but most also produce the occasionally interesting article. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

lioeters 7y ago

This reminds me of the mycologist Paul Stamets' proposal to use radiotrophic fungi to clean up Fukushima. https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediate-radiation-fukushima https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediat... Further on "mycoremediation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation My biased view is that fungi-based technology is an under-appreciated field with great potential for growth and wide range of applications.