Human: I stay in the sun too long and my skin turns a shade of red and owwie it hurts
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Human: I stay in the sun too long and my skin turns a shade of red and owwie it hurts
Desert plant: GIVE ME THAT RADIATION BAYBEEEE
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Mallory's Musings & Mischief last edited by [email protected]
@malcircuit But don't forget the third rung on the ladder, the unassuming little black mushrooms quietly doing their own thing in the dark (now that the Cherenkov glow has mostly waned, anyway) nuclear catacombs of Pripyat:
Additional research by Tugai, Zhdanova, and John Dighton of Rutgers University found that fungal bodies containing melanin were actually drawn to radiation. Berkeley National Lab microbiologist Tamas Torok describes this phenomenon, known as positive radiotropism, as “the capability of fungal organisms to sense radioactivity and grow directionally toward the radiation source.” Torok, who had samples of these radiation-resistant fungi in his lab for years, notes that the process isn’t really analogous to metabolism or photosynthesis, but is another form of energy conversion.
An American team of researchers helmed by Ekaterina Dadachova and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University acquired some samples of their own. Their findings confirmed the Ukrainian team’s conclusion that melanin was behind fungi’s unique ability to thrive with radiation. “We began to expose the fungi to radiation. What we noticed was they would grow faster, and this was associated with melanin,” Casadevall says. “If they didn’t have melanin, you didn’t see the effect.”
Source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chernobyl-black-fungi-space