A Fungi At Parties

I have no idea why I haven't mentioned this before, but a recent conversation over at the Fray has tripped my memory and I wanted to share something incredibly fascinating, true believers.

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By this point, we have long be aware of photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into a form of energy for their metabolic processes. The linchpin compound of that marvelous transmutation is a complex little molecule called chlorophyll, the name being derived from Greek words that translate roughly as "green leaf". Without going into a large amount of complex technical jargon, what it does is to allow a chemical reaction that synthesizes sugars (carbohydrates) out of carbon dioxide and hydrogen hydroxide (water). Now as awesome as that is, what I want to focus on here isn't the plant, but the light it uses.

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Sunlight...any light really, is just one of many forms of what is called "radiant energy". Most people associate the words with what is called "electromagnetic radiation" which is what we're talking about when referring to light or radio waves. Another part of that grouping however is "ionizing radiation" which is what most of us think of when we talk about nuclear power, weapons or radioactive waste.

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Nasty stuff, that waste. Lasts a long time...upwards of a million years in many cases. If you ever wondered why there is such a push back against nuclear power then here's your chief culprit. There have been years of debate about how to manage the stuff but the basic plan hasn't changed much; seal it, bury it and try to forget about it so you can get on with it.

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Getting back to the various forms of radiant energy however, I want to draw your attention to another nifty little chemical that deals with the stuff; you see, animals have to deal with exposure to all the same things that plants do and as we all know, animals don't have chlorophyll. Well, the overwhelming majority don't; we'll make an exception for our little friend Elysia chlorotica, whom I've mentioned before. So we of the animal kingdom developed a different, equally complex little molecule to handle the task called melanin. Well...we think we did.

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You see, we share this particular molecule with another bunch of critters who seem to have been using it in the same way. The Kingdom Fungi. Hence the picture of our little friend up there.

Now as it happens, we've long supposed that the mushrooms had been using melanin the same way we do: to protect themselves from levels of naturally occurring radiant energy, generally sunlight. I mean everyone likes a sunny day but too much of anything is bad for you; why else would we have invented sunblock? On the other hand, we know that fungi will grow in the dark so we can basically dismiss the idea that they use melanin as a part of their metabolic process, like plants do chlorophyll. Don't we?

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In May of 2007, an interesting little article found its way into Scientific America. A fellow named Arturo Casadevall notice something about the pools of water at a site he was studying. They would become contaminated with melanotic fungi.

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Okay, so what? There have always been various fungi that thrive in water. What makes these so special? It has to do with where the water was, where Casadevall's site was.

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Casadevall was performing research at the site of one of the worst radiative disasters in history occurred. He was in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The water pools were little ponds of highly irradiated water and the fungi, the ones that used melanin anyway, were going nuts. The hypothesis? Melanotic fungi like radiation.

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So where am I going with this? Well, it goes back to the question of what you do with the radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant. Obviously more experiments need to be conducted but, according to Casadevall and his associates, it seems that melanotic fungi are actually absorbing the radiation from their environment and storing it in a way that essentially neutralizes its harmful properties. Given our ability to engineer simple organisms, which is exactly what fungi are, it isn't hard to imagine an engineered fungi being used to breakdown radioactive waste products.

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In the current political climate, science is often disparaged by many Americans. They think that science is somehow out to get them, that it is going to destroy their lives which is ironic because it was science that enabled their way of life to begin with. The same people which are always clamoring for the next great achievement in weapons technology or cosmetic advancement are determined to undermine scientific endeavored in almost every other field. They love it for the bomb and hate for the radiation; now we are poised to begin undoing the radioactive nightmare the hunger for greater destructive power has unleashed upon us.

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Will they allow us the resources to do anything about it?

Deeper Blue

We find ourselves, now, in one of those pivotal moments. How so? Simply this: in just about 10 months there is going to be an election, in which several seats in both the House and the Senate are going to go up for grabs; many incumbents have already informed us that they will not be seeking re-election, signaling what we had already figured out on our own, that this is not a good time to be one of those who was in power while Congress was very visibly not solving peoples’ problems. At the same time, the chief piece of legislation not being passed is the enormously high-profile healthcare reform bill, upon which a great many peoples’ political lives have been wagered. How does this fall out?

The short version is this: if the Democratic majority can manage to get comprehensive healthcare reform passed in time for this year’s campaign season, it will provide enough of a boost to cement if not increase their majority for the next several cycles, as well as provide a solid foundation for an Obama win in 2012. Politically, this terrifies the Republican Party which, despite smalls wins in several state races, can see for itself a future as marginalized regional party. Thus the spur for their new favorite tactic, “Just Say NO!”

Recently rumors have begun to surface of a particular memo being circulated in the chambers of certain Democrats which essentially states their intention to see the bill run through the reconciliation process, a path suggested by Rep. Clyburn of South Carolina. Big surprise, considering the proximity of the aforementioned elections. Also we are drawing closer to Fearless Leader’s “healthcare summit” where in he proposes to meet specifically with lawmakers from both right and left in order to hash out some sort of legislation. This is a politically savvy move, as well as being good policy; you provide a very visible process by which you gather as much input from all sides as you can (and let us be completely fair, the Republicans have presented a large number of very good ideas) while simultaneously forcing the opposition to come to the table and be seen negotiating. At the very least, if they should refuse then they are very obviously not fulfilling their obligations as representatives of their electorates; refusing to participate would essentially give the left carte blanch to write whatever they like and ram it through.

Speaking purely for myself, I’m getting thoroughly disgusted with the entire enterprise. On the one hand, the Democrats have spent so much time and effort in attempting to be inclusive that they have thus-far failed to act on the mandate given them in 2008; on the other, the Republicans are so obstinate as to be positively childish. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for lengthy and deliberate debate but we’ve passed the point of reason. The procedural obstructionism and misinformation from the right and the hand-wringing and concession-giving on the left have yielded nothing thus far but frustration and more gridlock.