Chernobyl’s Strange Black Fungi Have A Superpower

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Within Chernobyl’s exclusion zone grows a jet-black fungus that thrives in radiation. The melanin that turns the fungi black seems to be key to their success in the irradiated landscape; the further you go into the exclusion zone, the blacker the fungi are. In the lab, melanised fungi grew better when exposed to radiation, while fungi without melanin didn’t benefit from it. It’s possible that these black fungi could help with radiation clean-up efforts both on Earth and in space; they also reduced radiation when they were sent to space. Read full article here

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