Unbelievable. We have a slime that prospers in a gamma ray
rich environment. Just where in hell did
this variant evolve? A black hole perhaps?
It is just
that a gamma rich environment on earth is hardly common. Low level yes, but rich as in never. We may have just seen an opportunistic slime
immediately evolve to use a little used process inherent to the system and in
such a way that the rest was not destroyed.
I think
that we are back to knowing squat about radiation and ample lab work is
obviously necessary.
Anyway
this gets my vote for its wow factor.
Major
biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor??
There has been an exciting new biological discovery inside
the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci fi movie, a
robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on
the walls. Since it is highly
radioactive in there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living,
let alone thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the
slime, which it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than
was thought at first glance.
This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more
than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma
radiation as a food source. Samples of these fungi grew significantly faster when
exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times the normal background radiation level.
The fungi appear to use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the
same fashion as plants use chlorophyll. That is to say, the melanin molecule
gets struck by a gamma ray and its chemistry is altered. This is an amazing discovery, no one had
even suspected that something like this was possible.
Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some
interesting speculation and potential research. Humans have melanin molecules
in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are getting some of their
energy from radiation? This also implies there could be organisms living in
space where ionizing radiation is plentiful. I’ve always been a big panspermia proponent,
the idea that life did not originate on Earth but is actually common in the
cosmos. Organisms that can live in space certainly gives more credence to this
idea.
Possibly
this could also be used to create plants or mushrooms that could grow in space,
serving as a food source for space travellers. Maybe these fungi could be
modified and used somehow to clean up radiation contaminated environments.
There’s quite a few of those, in fact the disposal of radioactive waste is
still a huge and unsolved problem. Now the fungi couldn’t actually eat the
radioactive isotopes, I’m not saying that, but if they can live in radioactive
environments they might be used to somehow scour out or concentrate the
radioactive isotopes in such a way as to facilitate their clean up.
Imagine,
there’s fallout from a nuclear accident and what do the guys in suits do? They
show up, spray mushroom spores over everything, and a few weeks later the
mushrooms are harvested and disposed of while the contaminated area is now
radiation free. It would certainly be useful, the picture at the top shows the
still abandoned town of Priyat, Ukraine. It was built to house the workers at
the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and was evacuated within hours of the
accident.
An excellent story about the Chernobyl disaster and Pripyat
is at the Ghost Town link. Just be aware that, no, Elana
didn’t actually ride her motorcycle through the radiation contaminated zone,
that was poetic license on her part. (Motorcycle enthusiasts have motorcycled
across Europe hoping to duplicate her tour, only to be told by the guards that
that motorcycles are not allowed in the contaminated zone.) The pictures and
descriptions are accurate though, some of the images are incredibly poignant.
Just think, a whole town where the inhabitants fled without warning, leaving
all of their possessions behind.
Fortunately
the Chernobyl reactor was an old and unsafe design, only one other reactor in
the world was built the same way. It was right here in Berkeley, a research
reactor built on campus in the fifties. It was sagely decided to quietly shut
it down after Chernobyl; while it couldn’t have had an accident on the scale of
Chernobyl, the locals were a little concerned anyhow. In fact it was a block
away from my favourite burrito place, yikes.
(The
above image was released into the public domain by its author. Credit: Jason
Minshull.)
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