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Chernobyl Fungus Seems to Have Evolved an Incredible Ability (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by m3t00@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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how the aliens survive spaceflight

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[-] tyrant@lemmy.world 124 points 2 months ago

That fungus is called Cladosporium sphaerospermum, and some scientists think its dark pigment – melanin – may allow it to harness ionizing radiation through a process similar to the way plants harness light for photosynthesis. This proposed mechanism is even referred to as radiosynthesis.

[-] lime@feddit.nu 40 points 2 months ago

wait, are black people more radiation-resistant?

[-] Egonallanon@feddit.uk 116 points 2 months ago

In terms of UV radiation cuaisng things like sunburn and skin cancer in humans yes.

At the scale when gamma radiation is being thrown around at high levels no.

[-] bluGill@fedia.io 14 points 2 months ago

Maybe slightly - but you are a fool if you test this.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

Because I'm not black

[-] Poojabber@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Also, because you are a fool. They are not mutually exclusive reasons.

[-] aldhissla@piefed.world 3 points 2 months ago

There's a plot point about this in the Expanse. The series only mentions it shortly in that season where they had to cut half the stuff (though maybe not that).

Cool that we can achieve radiosynthesis without sci-fi magic. A pity Chernobyl had to happen for this discovery.

[-] Emi@ani.social 2 points 2 months ago

So IRL ghouls that get healed by radiation possible?

[-] MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 18 points 2 months ago

Is the incredible ability "having an anus"? Because that's my first impression from the picture. Goopy martian butthole.

[-] m3t00@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

fungus made life on land possible, iirc. https://scitechdaily.com/earth-was-a-fungal-world-before-plants-existed/

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah i mean isn't that actually how it is; All plant organisms are eucaryotes and descend from animals (by taking on another extra chloroplast) which in turn descend from fungi, which was the first time that life experimented with putting genes into a special cell department (nucleus) to give it extra stability, so the genetic code can become more complex and more complex organisms can form without the genetic code being disrupted by the metabolic byproducts of the cell all the time.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 months ago

Garbage website.

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 months ago

I have been talking about exactly this with a friend yesterday.

We were discussing how dangerous space radiation really is. Consider you want to live on Mars. There's about 12 Sievert (Sv) of radiation that you would be exposed to through your lifetime if you lived in a habitat with absolutely no shielding, about 0.41 mSv/day average (Source).

Wikipedia says that a 1 Sv dose is linked to a 5.5% chance to eventually develop fatal cancer (Source). Based on that, 12 Sv would give you a 50% chance of developing cancer throughout your life. (1 - 0.055)^12^ = 0,507...

But is this really a meaningful way of looking at things? I guess there's ways that life could become much more radiation-hardened, if we only knew how. And fungus like the one in the article are to make us understand how.

[-] skibidi@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

On mars, initial habitation would be underground/in canyons to shield from the radiation. Similar plans for the moon.

Of course excavating sub-surface dwellings on another celestial body is currently about as technically feasible as time travel, but that's the heart of the most realistic plans for long-term habitation.

[-] m3t00@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

read good things about lava tunnels on the moon. not as much on mars. must be caves somewhere. would take many generations for natural selection to give us better skin. if we survive. ocean voyages were a big gamble.

[-] Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

You have the largest canyon in the solar system, if you live there you get pretty dense atmosphere, compared to the surface, and lateral earth shielding, and you're also next to the largest mountain in the solar system.

[-] DoubleDongle@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

We need some of that shit growing in our space stations. And maybe we could use to give some of its genes to ourselves to help survive out there

[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 months ago

Can that work? Radiation damages genes in unpredictable ways because its wavelength is smaller than the dna itself, right? How might that work for something more complex than fungi?

[-] jnod4@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We're probably more simple than fungi. Jokes aside we're very complex creatures but each cell of ours is just so much more simple or equal in complexity to a mold. They're between 25% to 50% shared genome with us.

Tbh all life on earth is so similar to each other one could say we're all the same exact organism just warped in a million different ways with extreme degrees of variance

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah i've been thinking this for a long time; All life on Earth is so ridiculously similar, it really shows how much code was reused and how much of a common platform there is.

[-] m3t00@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

good idea. radiation shielding

[-] 8oow3291d@feddit.dk 3 points 2 months ago

Why do you think this fungus would absorb more radiation than e.g. a similar volume of water?

[-] reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

wouldnt fungus also use the radiation since it needs it to live? water just gets more and more irradiated since everything just stays

[-] m3t00@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

not more exactly but could make use of the energy to grow whatever the shield is made of. byproducts like salad greens lol

[-] Brummbaer@pawb.social 4 points 2 months ago

Every 2-3 years Radiosynthesys comes to the surface in science journalism. So far no one has come up with an explanation how it could work or if it could work.

They best they got is, some kind of melanin response to radioactivity, which would make sense as a protection mechanism.