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RE: TIL: Radiation Eating Fungus found at Chernobyl
So far what I've read on it has been fascinating, especially that they use Melanin to capture and convert the radiation. I'll probably include some of these ideas into my space mining fiction story, lol. It'd be handy to be able to gain energy when working in space as well as it's methods of preventing itself from mutating in a damaging way. From what I'd seen, this species has multiple strands of the same DNA chains so if one is 'changed' it still has previous, stable copies to work from preventing many of the common exposure to radiation issues.
Having more than one genome would allow for effective use of homologous recombination to correct the damage, so long as there was some way to differentiate the undamaged chain from the damaged chain.
I remember it having some method to tell the 'old/control' vs 'new/mutated' chain, but I've not been able to track down exactly where I had read that right now. I'll add it in here should I be able to track it down.
Cool, its certainly not a fungus that you want to be exposed to, as if you breathe it in, it is can cause fatal meningitis even in non immune compromised individuals. It lives dormant in the lungs until immune system weakness, then travels to and infects the brain and meninges. Not a good fungus!
Doh! This was finally going to be my chance to become a Super Hero!! Lol, jkjk
Definitely a good thing to have noted on here.