Fungus in Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone has mutated to 'feed' on radiation (2024)
44 comments
·November 12, 2025rdtsc
ge96
Space shield?
0cf8612b2e1e
In the Expanse books, space colonies would consume algae. Using some alien woo-woo, they engineered one with a superior yield because it could supplement its inputs with radiation.
throwup238
In the short lived HBO comedy Avenue 5 the ship was surrounded by a “poop shield” that used human excrement as a radiation shield. Someone forgot to vent the system and it burst, sending feces flying in a small orbit around the ship.
Later on, one of the characters sees the face of Pope John Paul II in the poop and the owner of the spaceship (who was supposed to be played by Jack Black but instead Josh Gad ruined the entire series) sends up a laser light show to illuminate the dookies in space.
gorfian_robot
they should spread some in fuel rod storage pools to see how it does
datadrivenangel
Life finds a way.
We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well, so eventually our plastics will 'rust' and degrade faster.
shagie
> We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well
https://big.ucdavis.edu/blog/plastic-eating-microbe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETase
November 4th : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251104013023.h...
> Beneath the ocean’s surface, bacteria have evolved specialized enzymes that can digest PET plastic, the material used in bottles and clothes. Researchers at KAUST discovered that a unique molecular signature distinguishes enzymes capable of efficiently breaking down plastic. Found in nearly 80% of ocean samples, these PETase variants show nature’s growing adaptation to human pollution.
perihelions
Also an HN thread,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886479 ("Widespread distribution of bacteria containing PETases across global oceans (oup.com)"—1 day ago, 72 comments)
(The new $300 iPhone thong is made of PET (polyester), so, it's reassuring to know the universe does have the capability to unmake those).
chistev
I was going to ask about plastic eating microbes in my comment. Even metal eating microbes. I wonder how we'll handle that when they start destroying the foundation of civilization. Lol
dilawar
I few months ago I learnt something related that may be a common knowledge to many here. I feel silly that I didn't know.
Earth had a plastic like problem before. There were no fungi that eat cellulose so dead trees were just piling up without degrading. Those trees turned into ~petroleum~ coal that we consume now.
That trees somehow turned into ~petroleum~ coal, I learnt in school. I used to imagine trees were somehow buried under stand suddenly and before they could be degraded they turned into ~petroleum~ coal under heavy pressure.
rpdillon
Yes, the Carboniferous Period! I learned about this a few years ago and was astonished.
> The world at beginning of the Carboniferous period was a humid, tropical place. Seasons, if any, were indistinct. The Carboniferous trees and plants resembled those that live in tropical and mildly temperate areas today. They grew in wetlands and were shallow-rooted. This, combined with their great height and ponderous weight, was a bad combination, because these enormous trees would regularly become uprooted and topple into the marshy ground, landing on other trees that preceded them.
> Here is where fate steps in. Although trees had evolved lignin and cellulose, no bacteria that could digest these woody substances had yet evolved. In fact, those bacteria would take another 60 million years to evolve. All this time huge trees kept growing, crashing into the swampy ground, and piling up on top of uncounted other trees, getting buried deeper and deeper into the ground. Over millions of years, subjected to the heat and pressure of deep burial, the carbon in these trees was converted into the fossil fuels we know and love today – coal, oil, and natural gas. All the fossil fuels we use were produced during this 60-million year period.
andai
Isn't that nuts? It took like 50 million years.
Meanwhile we got plastic-eating bacteria after like 100 years.
lucianbr
Funny, we make plastics from petroleum, so it looks like some particular carbon atoms just don't want to go back in the circuit.
chistev
You mean coal. Petroleum was from the dead animals from millions of years ago.
datadrivenangel
To a large extent, it probably won't be too bad because the density of plastics is still low in the general environment. If there are steep energy gradients, eventually life tends to take advantage of them.
Also there's the risk that we accidentally release some genetically modified bacteria and they prove to be hardier than expected.
benchly
This was my take for a short story I banged out one week after reading about the metal-eating microbes. Basically, humanity was all "three cheers for these little guys helping us fix all the pollution, etc" then shifting to "huh, that's an awful lot of changes happening to the gas content of the air and oh, didn't you corporate guys who sold us these solutions say you had these microbes under control? Oh, you did? But...like past tense?"
I read too much dystopian sci-fi to write much else, but in truth, I have pretty high hopes for these garbage-eating microbes.
amelius
We might soon need silicon-eating microbes.
HPsquared
Very hard to do because silicon dioxide (aka quartz / glass) forms an inert physical barrier to prevent further oxidation. Kinetics and diffusion say no!
freehorse
We will invent something to kill them, as usual.
cyberlimerence
Only if antibiotic resistant bacteria don't kill us first.
chistev
Always trust humans when united
maplant
I’m not even remotely close to knowledgeable on this subject but I assume metal eating microbes are not possible because metals are not molecular and therefore there’s nothing for them to be broken down into
raverbashing
It does find, though last time evolution took some million years to figure out how to break polymers. (That period is known as the Carboniferous period)
krige
Well, good thing it had a head start now.
deepvibrations
Wow, this is impressive. It's also the exact storyline from the animated series 'Common Side Effects', a really good series that feels more like watching a feature film.
tempfile
I assume it does not need to be mentioned that this does NOT "clean up" nuclear waste. It just means that the constant energy emitted by it can be harnessed by these fungi. The radioactive material will remain hazardous for the same amount of time as if the fungi did not exist.
softwaredoug
This sounds like a plot point in Project Hail Mary. Which has a microbe that lives off the sun, creating problems, and new technologies.
drunkonvinyl
The protomolecule???
Razengan
Consider the sci-fi trope of "mutants" resulting from existing animals exposed to radiation, I think it may be more common and likely for just the "microbiome" like fungi and bacteria to mutate instead and then that could affect the macro fauna in new ways.
Rooster61
I mean, this isn't THAT surprising. Photosynthesis after all is just radiosynthesis of electromagnetic radiation in the visible or near visible spectrum. Gamma radiation is the same phenomenon, just with a far higher frequency and enough energy to ionize molecules.
The chemical process obviously has to differ considering gamma radiation has enough energy to knock off electrons, but once you deal with that, it's energy ripe for the taking. I'm not shocked that life finds a way to harness that energy where abundant.
In fact, had life come about on an Earth with a weaker magnetic field, it may have relied more on gamma radiation than visible light, especially considering the larger potential amount of consumable energy present in gamma rays.
lo_zamoyski
Content aside, it would be better if we avoided sources like UNILAD [0].
wonks
I'm honestly disappointed that this post got so much attention with such a dubious source. The article doesn't even link to a press release, as far as I can tell.
tokai
It gives both the full name of fungus and the name of a researcher plus his affiliation. More information than you often get fore more 'reputable' sources. Criticizing something only on the basis of the source, while the actual content is completely fine, is peak cargo cult information literacy.
Razengan
It had to be fucking fungus
Apparently trees used to lay fallen on the ground for millions (?) of years before fungus evolved to eat them, and since then there has been no new coal.
(I may be wildly off on the specifics but that is the gist I got from reading stuff here and there)
I swear fungi are the coolest and most "alien" lifeforms on this planet next to cephalopods ଳ
Or they're the original and we're the alien
Rooster61
Fungi existed before plants, and definitely before plants evolved to the point of being what we'd consider trees. In fact, we find large fungi fossils that once likely lined the landscape like trees do now.
Found a paper on it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1866175/pdf/pone.00...
> we cautiously suggest that the ability of melanin to capture electromagnetic radiation combined with its remarkable oxidation-reduction properties may confer upon melanotic organisms the ability to harness radiation for metabolic energy. The enhanced growth of melanotic fungi in conditions of radiation fluxes suggests the need for additional investigation to ascertain the mechanism for this effect.