14 DAY TRIAL // Just recently, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a new study that argues that an Ascomycete fungus can be used to clean up the environment and fight back the negative effects of industrial development.
The way they explain it, the process seems fairly simple and easy to grasp: when said fungus grows and starts to produce spores, it also releases a byproduct in its surrounding environment. This byproduct is a superoxide that in turn reacts with naturally-occurring manganese.
The chemical compound stemming from this latter reaction is the one responsible for getting rid of toxic metals, for sequestrating carbon and even for transporting minerals and nutrients from one region to another.
Harvard University's official website provides us with professor Colleen Hansel's views on this topic, “If you can get manganese to oxidize, then it forms these really active minerals, manganese oxides, which are environmental sponges that will clean up the water.”
Given the fact that, as the same source informs us, the land near coal mines is more often than not heavily polluted as a result of arsenic, cadmium or cobalt being carried around by the runoff water, the scientists argue that this is perhaps the best way to clean up the ecosystems close to these industrial sites.
However, as professor Colleen Hansel further explains, simply releasing fungus in these areas will do very little to help solve the environmental issues, because, as pointed out before, this green-oriented fungus only produces the manganese-reactant superoxide during periods of growth.
This discovery can help improve on present-day biochemical processes that are employed when trying to diminish the environmental impact of various human activities.
More precisely, if researchers come up with ways to stimulate the fungus to begin its growth, both public health and the natural world would only have to benefit.
As Colleen Hansel puts it, “We're traveling down a whole new avenue in biogeochemistry. It's exciting right now to be one of the people sitting in the front seat.”