Biological discovery inside Chernobyl

There has been an important biological discovery inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor.
A robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on the walls.
Since it is highly radioactive inside the sealed reactor, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone thriving.

The robot obtained samples, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was thought at first glance.
The slime, a collection of several fungi, was actually using gamma radiation as a food source.

Samples of these bacteria grew significantly faster when exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times the normal background radiation level.
The fungi use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use chlorophyll.
That is to say, the melanin molecule gets struck by a gamma ray and its chemistry is altered.

This is an amazing discovery, no one had even suspected that something like this was possible.

Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some interesting speculation and potential research.
Humans have melanin molecules in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are getting some of their energy from radiation?
This also implies there could be organisms living in space where ionizing radiation is plentiful.

Gene Haynes