Active Fungi Found in Antarctica

Since there are 654.38 million known fungi, Robert Blanchett may have discovered three new fungi, which doesn't seem so noticeable. But he found these fungi in places in Antarctica where no one believed they existed. He said that they were admiring the historical treasures of the wooden houses built by the legendary British explorers Ernest shackleton and robert scott a century ago.

Guatemala's human rights breakthrough in Richmond Prison The excavation of three small buildings built in shackleton and Scott's efforts to explore and reach the South Pole between 190 1 and 19 15 are considered to be valuable links with the "heroic era" polar exploration, when eight countries were in 1895 and/or. These huts are one of the only buildings left when humans first tried to live in the Antarctic continent. They are supervised by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust. Scientists, eco-tourists and history lovers visit these buildings. They marveled at cultural relics such as newspaper clippings and canned food and clothes left by explorers from shackleton and Scott. Environmentalists know who to turn to for advice when they notice rotten boards and black-spotted wooden boxes in the hut. 57-year-old plant pathologist at the University of Minnesota

Blanchett is an authoritative expert on how fungi affect archaeological sites. In 1988, he published a paper describing the fungal decay of the wooden remains of an excavated Native American village in Washington State. This paper initially focused on forest diseases such as root rot and white pine blister rust. "I immediately realized that I wanted to recruit him," Elizabeth Simpson recalled, 198 1 year. She established a project at the University of Pennsylvania to study and protect Gordon's royal wooden furniture. In the following decades, Blanchett studied the wooden remains of deserts and poles in the Atlantic Ocean, Asia, Africa and North America. Thousands of millimeters of debris samples may belong to the Turkish tomb of King Midas and the fist-sized fragments of a sunken civil war warship, which are hidden in more than a dozen freezers in the laboratory of the school's Sao Paulo campus. Robert J.Koestler, director of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Protection Institute, said that in each case, his job was to identify fungi that might damage cultural relics and recommend ways to stop them. In the 1990s, when Costler was a research scientist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he asked Blanchett for help.

On the day I visited Blanchett's laboratory, he was staring at the computer screen, on which there was an image of rotten wood cells magnified by an electron microscope by 8000 times. A photo enlarges a piece of wood the size of a dime; In the photo, white rectangular circles stick together and are full of holes, which is the characteristic of a soft rot fungus. "Oh, dear, isn't that beautiful," said Blanchett.

This is not what most people think of fungi. Fungi are usually disgusting creatures, including mushrooms, molds, molds and rust. Unlike plants, fungi have no chlorophyll and no parasitic function. They feed on plants, or remove debris or debris from other life forms. A fungus that attacks wood (called woody fungus) usually sustains itself by secreting enzymes, which can decompose lignin, cellulose and other tough polymers into simpler molecules as nutrients.

Before Blanchett, no mycologists had recorded any wood-degrading fungi native to Antarctica. After all, fungi usually prefer warmth. For millions of years, no trees have grown on the frozen continent. But when Blanchett compared the DNA of fungi found in the explorer's cabin with the database of known species, he found three different fungi.