Taking a fungal trip through the soil

The rehabilitation of polluted soils often relies on the help of bacteria. However, this requires that micro-organisms are indeed able to reach the irregularly spread contaminations in the soil. Even mobile bacteria often fail when they come across obstacles. In contrast to bacteria, however, soil-based fungi with their extensive and up to 100 metres per gramme long hyphae can easily travel through the soil and so pave the way for the bacteria. Environmental microbiologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ have shown in lab trials that this mycelium - much like a highway network - can transport the pollutant-degrading soil-based bacteria and so improve their access to the pollutants in the soil. The same applies to mycorrhiza fungi which replace the root hairs of trees in a kind of symbiotic  association, through which they are fed with photosynthetic products. Sunlight then indirectly serves as an energy source for transporting the bacteria. The new findings help accelerate pollutant degradation in the soil and so rehabilitate contaminated areas more quickly. The "fungal highway" is then perhaps not only the world's largest, but also the only one that helps return nature back to her original state.