“Mould found at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster appears to be feeding off the radiation. Could we use it to shield space travellers from cosmic rays?,” asks the BBC:
In May 1997, Nelli Zhdanova entered one of the most radioactive places on Earth – the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl’s exploded nuclear power plant – and saw that she wasn’t alone.
Across the ceiling, walls and inside metal conduits that protect electrical cables, black mould had taken up residence….Like plants reaching for sunlight, the fungal hyphae of the black mould seemed attracted to ionizing radiation
The mould – formed from a number of different fungi – seemed to be doing something remarkable. It hadn’t just moved in because workers at the plant had left. Instead, the fungi were actually growing towards the radioactive particles that littered the area….into the original source of the radiation, the rooms within the exploded reactor building.
This “discovery offers hope of cleaning up radioactive sites and even providing ways of protecting astronauts from harmful radiation as they travel into space.”
In the region around the abandoned nuclear plant, big animals such as wolves and wild boar have proliferated due to humans no longer living there. But even today, high levels of radiation are found in the ruins and some other places due to radioactive material ejected from the reactor when it exploded.
German scientists have discovered fungus that can eat plastics in bodies of water, without needing any other food source.
Scientists are using genetically-modified fungus to catch mosquitoes. Chinese scientists have used the fungus “to create highly effective mosquito traps.” The engineered fungus “constantly releases a scent that draws mosquitoes into fungus-laced traps, where the spores infect and kill them. In lab tests, these traps killed 90 to 100 percent of mosquitoes. The researchers hope their fungus could offer a cheap, scalable alternative to chemical insecticides,” reports The Doomslayer.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs also turned ants into fungus farmers.
Water hyacinth get rid of a lot of microplastics and heavy metal pollution in waterways.
A plant virus could save plants from parasites that feed on their roots.
