I've always been amazed that "Life Always Seems to Find a Way" to fill any sort of niche such as around the deep water thermal vents, to albino species in deep caves and now to massively irradiated areas. This news story discusses the discovery of Radiotrophic fungus found within Chernobyl that actually "Eat Radiation" as a means of acquiring energy.
Much like plants developed the green chlorophyll to capture sunlight and turn it into needed "food," this radiation eating fungus (Cryptococcus neoformans), colored near black, has been found to use Melanin (the same that effects our skin pigmentation) to capture gamma radiation upon impact and convert it into usable energy. It is worth noting here that the fungi do NOT actually ingest the radioactive material itself, but rather capture the gamma wave radiation that is emitted.
Continued Research and Applications
Research has continues on these fungi to see if they could be used to remove toxic waste. One of the more interesting things I read in this article was:
They all shared one very interesting characteristic—they all contained the skin pigment melanin.
Perhaps the most interesting was a common species of black mold, Cryptococcus neoformans. This fungus does not normally contain melanin, but when exposed to radiation levels 500 times higher than background radiation, it would start producing melanin within 20 to 40 minutes.
Cryptococcus and other species grow faster in high radiation environments then their counterparts do at normal amounts of radiation. Casadevall’s work led to the discovery that the fungi use melanin to capture energy given off by ionizing radiation, rather like plants use chlorophyll to capture sunlight.
-Source
A couple of articles on this can be read at the epochtimes.com,on nature.com and here at sciencedaily.com.
Image Sources:
Cryptococcus neoformans