(UEFS - 2012)Like a black light poster come to lif

(UEFS - 2012)

Like a black light poster come to life, a group of bioluminescent ¹fungi collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near São Paulo, Brazil, emanates a soft green glow when the lights go out. The mushrooms are part of 5 the genus Mycena, a group that includes about 500 species worldwide. Of ²these only 33 are known to be bioluminescent — capable of producing light through a chemical reaction. Since 2002, Cassius Stevani, professor of Chemistry 10 at the University of São Paulo, Dennis Desjardin, professor of mycology at San Francisco State University in California, and Marina Capelari of Brazil’s Institute of Botany have discovered 10 more bioluminescent fungi species — four of which are new to science — in Brazil’s 15 tropical forests. The work, Stevani says, has increased the number of glowers known since the 1970s by 30 percent.

In addition to mushrooms, a variety of marine animals, select species of ³bacteria, insects, and annelids 20 (earthworms) are known to be bioluminescent. Bioluminescence creates “cold” light — emissions 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 25 ⁴this way remains a mystery, Stevani says. To get the green glow of the new specimens of bioluminescent mushrooms, Dr Desjardin and Dr Stevani had to go out on new moon nights and stumble around in the forest, running into trees, while keeping an eye out for poisonous 30 snakes and prowling jaguars. Besides helping researchers decipher how and why mushrooms glow, Stevani is studying the bioluminescent fungi’s ability to signal the presence of ⁵toxins in the soil. In the lab, his team has developed a procedure that 35 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 40 that the fungi could serve as a tool for bioremediation (cleanup using living organisms) of contaminated soil.

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