Re:So... (Score 1)

of general note, fungi are not all that good at munching on metals, iirc. they are very good at consuming organics with wild abandon, and that's what contain the Al or other metals of the CD/DVDs. polycarbonate derivatives come to mind as probable. if you want to munch on metals, chose some sort of bacterium - they tend to have the better metabolic machinery for that task. as for "gold-eating" bacteria, they didn't eat it, but they would concentrate it (iirc). by eat, i mean metabolize. Au is not readily metabolized, even by bacteria (is why we likes it so much). lastly, the Al degradation was most likely a result of either acid or base production by the fungus. probably acid as usually it's usually something in a nitrogen rich environment that pumps out base (urea) and a CD is probably nitrogen limiting.