Gold-coated fungi are the new gold diggers
Purple coloured ligament like strands of fungi magnified many times by a scanning electron microscope with gold coloured balls clustered on the strands.
Coloured scanning electron microscope image of the gold-coated strands of Fusarium oxysporum fungi.
Working on new and exciting methods of cultivating sub surface microbes, one of our early career researchers, Dr Xiao Deng has contributed to the recently published findings of gold-coated fungal strands in the soil near Boddington in Western Australia.
In the paper, the authors show, fungi, a major driver of mineral bioweathering, can initiate gold oxidation under Earth surface conditions, which is of significance for dissolved gold species formation and distribution. Data further reveal that indigenous fungal diversity positively correlates with in situ gold concentrations.
Read more about the interesting discovery in ‘Gold coated fungi are the new gold diggers’ or link straight to the article in Nature Communications.”