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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Toxic mercury vanishes when this fungus gets to work

Fungi that live in plant roots can detoxify dangerous forms of the metal.
Composite of three images of corn growing in small plant pots with different leaf lengths.

Maize in soil laced with toxic mercury (left) is stunted, but plants treated with a wild fungus that breaks down the metal (middle) and those treated with a genetically engineered version of the fungus (right) grow bigger. Credit: Congcong Wu

Root-colonizing fungi that are known to defend host plants against insects can also eliminate toxic forms of mercury from the soil and water1.

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Nature 611, 639 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03710-8

References

  1. Wu, C. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2214513119 (2022).

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