The 'Promiscuous' Enzymes That Make Mushrooms Glow: Why Fungi Could Fight Cancer

Scientists have figured out why some mushrooms glow in the dark, and their bioluminescence can be connected to the Devil.

The fungi aren’t Satanists, it’s just that the group of molecules at the root of the glow are called luciferins, which, ironically, while sharing a root with a common name for the ruler of Hell, actually denote the exact opposite of darkness — Lucifer means “light-bearing” in Latin. In creatures that glow in the dark, luciferins react with oxygen and an enzyme that speeds everything up to produce oxyluciferin, which is what actually emits the light. Mushrooms have their own luciferin fueling their glow.

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After crushing fungi into a slurry, researchers studied the chemical makeup of the oxyluciferin in mushrooms and have played with the mixture to make different colors, a study in Science Advances said. They were able to tweak the color by combining the mushrooms’ enzyme with various luciferins, thus making different oxyluciferins, because, they wrote in the study, the enzyme has a “promiscuous nature” and can be paired easily with others.

The mushroom samples they gathered — from the Brazilian Coconut Forest and from a southern Vietnam rainforest — were just some of the 80 different kinds of glowing fungus that are out there, so there still could be more to discover.

Eighty glowing species sounds like a lot, but there are nearly 100,000 species of fungus that we know about, a group that also encompasses yeast and mold in addition to mushrooms. However, the 80 that emit light, of course, don’t include all the other wildlife that glows, like fireflies and sea creatures.

Apart from a glowing mushroom being visually pleasing, it serves a human purpose. Glowing material has medical applications like highlighting different body parts and tissues that doctors are trying to target and track. That can include cancerous tissue, making it glow to assist medical professionals in removing it.

In the wild, the fungi have their own uses for the glowing. The Verge reported it attracts insects that “are key for spreading the mushroom’s spores so the mushroom can reproduce and colonize new food sources.”

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