A series of discoveries have upended long-held beliefs about white-rot fungus, and shed some light on carbon sequestration in nature.
This article appeared in the January/February 2022 issue ofIf you’ve encountered a dead tree in the woods or green algae on a lake, you’ve witnessed fungi at work. Yet scientists are just beginning to grasp the vital role that these worldwide organisms play in carbon sequestration, thanks in part to a couple of breakthrough studies in 2021.
Researchers already knew that 300 million years ago, white-rot fungi evolved the unique ability to digest. That’s the natural, tough polymer in the cell walls of trees, making them rigid and woody. This fungal super-skill of digestion ended the Carboniferous Period by decomposing woody debris that would’ve fossilized into coal. But no one really knew what happened to the carbon inside the lignin.
Scientists had long thought it simply evaporated into the atmosphere. But that didn’t sit right with Davinia Salvachúa Rodríguez, a microbiologist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. After 10 years of studying white-rot fungi, she demonstrated that it eats the carbon in lignin to fuel its growth, according to
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