Glow-in-the-dark mushroom found in Brazil

A glow-in-the-dark mushroom that has not been seen since 1840 has been found in a Brazilian rainforest.
The luminescent fungus was discovered by scientist Dennis Desjardin and a team from San Francisco State University in 2009.
They have now collected new specimens and reclassified it Neonothopanus gardner; their findings are published in the journal Mycologia.

A glow-in-the-dark mushroom that has not been seen since 1840 has been found in a Brazilian rainforest

Researchers hope that careful study of the mushroom - which shines brightly enough to read by - and its other bioluminescent cousins around the world will help answer the question of how and why some fungi glow.


Neonothopanus gardner was last seen in 1840 when British botanist George Gardner spotted boys playing with a glowing object the called 'flor-de-coco'.
To catch the green glow of the bioluminescent mushroom, Dr Desjardin and his research partner in Brazil, Dr Cassius Stevani, had to 'go out on new moon nights and stumble around in the forest, running into trees', while keeping an eye out for poisonous snakes and prowling jaguars.

THE LAST TIME THE GLOWING MUSHROOM WAS SEEN

In 1840, renowned British botanist George Gardner reported a strange sight from the streets of Vila de Natividade in Brazil - a group of boys playing with a glowing object that turned out to be a luminescent mushroom.

They called it 'flor-de-coco', and showed Gardner where it grew on decaying fronds at the base of a dwarf palm.

Gardner sent the mushroom to the Kew Herbarium in England where it was described and named Agaricus gardneri in honor of its discoverer.

The species was not seen again until 2009.

Digital cameras allowed them to photograph mushrooms that they suspected might be bioluminescent in darkened rooms.
They then analysed the photos for a glow - sometimes one that's not visible to the human eye - within a few minutes, compared to the 30 to 40 minutes required of regular film exposure.
Bioluminescence - simply the ability of organisms to produce light on their own - is a widespread phenomenon.
Jellyfish and fireflies might be the most familiar bioluminescent creatures, but organisms from bacteria to fungi to insects and fish make their own glow through a variety of chemical processes.

Bioluminescent fungi have been well-known for centuries, from the bright orange and poisonous jack o' lantern mushrooms to the phenomenon known as 'foxfire', where the nutrient-sipping threads of the honey mushroom give off a faint but eerie glow in rotten logs.
Glowing fungi have captured the imagination of cultures around the world, Dr Desjardin said: 'People are mostly afraid of them, calling them "ghost mushrooms".'


Researchers believe that the fungi make light in the same way that a firefly does, through a chemical mix of a luciferin compound and a luciferase.
Luciferase is an enzyme that aids the interaction among luciferin, oxygen and water to produce a new compound that emits light.


But scientists haven't yet identified the luciferin and luciferase in fungi.
'They glow 24 hours a day, as long as water and oxygen are available,' Dr Desjardin explained.
'But animals only produce this light in spurts. This tells us that the chemical that is acted upon by the enzyme in mushrooms has to be readily available and abundant.'
The why behind the glow also remains mostly a mystery. In mushrooms where the spore-bearing part glows, some scientists think the light may help attract insects that can help disperse the spores to grow new mushrooms.
But in the case of foxfire, it's the threadlike mycelium, which seek out nutrients for the fungi, that do the glowing.
Insects attracted to the mycelium might do more harm than good to the fungi if they ate the attractively lit structures.