New Glowing Fungi Species Found In Brazil

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                                               New Glowing Fungi Species Found in Brazil   






National Geographic
May 2, 2009

Like a black light poster come to life, a group of bioluminescent fungi collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near Sco Paulo, Brazil, emanates a soft green glow when the lights go out.

The mushrooms are part of the genus Mycena, a group that includes about 500 species worldwide. Of these only 33 are known to be bioluminescentcapable of producing light through a chemical reaction.

Since 2002 Cassius Stevani, professor of chemistry at the University of Sco Paulo; Dennis Desjardin, professor of mycology at San Francisco State University in California; and Marina Capelari of Brazil's Institute of Botany have discovered ten more bioluminescent fungi speciesfour of which are new to sciencein Brazil's tropical forests.

The work, Stevani says, has increased the number of glowers known since the 1970s by 30 percent. 

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A species of bioluminescent fungi looks unassuming as it pokes its capped head above the mossy wood from which it grows in the tropical forests of Brazil. But at night a chemical reaction causes the fungus to emit an eerie green glow sometimes called foxfire.

The 33 Mycena species known to glow in the dark are separated into 16 lineages, San Francisco State's Desjardin says.

"Obviously the big question then arises: Did luminescence evolve 16 different times in the genus Mycena, or did it evolve only a few times and was lost hundreds of times during the course of evolution?" he said in an email to National Geographic News.

To help answer this question, Desjardin's research team has been extracting and sequencing DNA from the glowing mushrooms. They will use the data to develop a mushroom "family tree" that includes glowers and related nonglowers, a first step to determining when bioluminescence emerged in fungi.

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Researcher Luis F. Mendes gazes up at a tree sporting ghostlike fungi in the forests south of Sco Paulo, Brazil.

Since 2002 several new species of glowing mushrooms have been found in the region, "some of the last remaining old-growth Atlantic forest habitat south of the city of Sco Paulo," San Francisco State's Desjardin said.

While searching for known glowing fungi in the forest, the University of Sco Paulo's Stevani came across an unusual specimen. He sent it to Desjardin, who identified it as Gerronema viridilucens, a species new to science and the first fungi from the genus Gerronema known to glow.

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A pair of bioluminescent fungi glows in Brazil's Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park.

In addition to mushrooms, a variety of marine animals as well as select species of bacteria, insects, and annelids (earthworms) are known to be bioluminescent.

Bioluminescence creates "cold" lightemissions with low thermal radiation. An enzyme called luciferase triggers a pigment called luciferin to oxidize, and the reaction emits light.

But why the fungi evolved to glow this way remains a mystery, the University of Sao Paulo's Stevani says.

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Stevani of the University of Sco Paulo leans in to collect a sample of bioluminescent fungi from the forests south of Sco Paulo, Brazil.

In addition to helping researchers decipher how and why mushrooms glow, Stevani is studying the bioluminescent fungi's ability to signal the presence of toxins in the soil. In the lab, his team has developed a procedure that shows that fungi emit less light when exposed to several metals and organic pollutants.

"In a near future we can use it to evaluate the toxicity of environmental samples of soil and sediments," Stevani said in an email to National Geographic News. The researcher also says that the fungi could serve as a tool for bioremediation (cleanup using living organisms) of contaminated soil.