Lud­dites, Re­joice!

by Elio

Those who are un­der­whelmed by mod­ern tech­nol­ogy do not stand alone. A fun­gus made an "in­destructible" CD in­op­er­a­ble by grow­ing on its edge, de­vour­ing alu­minum and poly­car­bon­ate, and mak­ing short shrift of the "in­for­ma­tion pits," what­ever they are. This par­tic­u­lar CD had resided in Be­lize un­der con­di­tions of high hu­mid­ity and tem­per­a­ture – "ex­treme weather con­di­tions" ac­cording to the in­ven­tor of the CD. But with global warm­ing, who knows! Leav­ing aside fur­ther temp­ta­tion to dwell on the frail­ties of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy, the mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy here is not with­out in­ter­est.

Ge­ot­richum can­didum. Source

The fun­gus is a kin of Ge­ot­richum, a com­mon yeast found in the air, in soil, in the hu­man body and in dairy prod­ucts. The abil­ity of fungi to grow un­der con­di­tions of very low humi­dity re­minds us that they vie with bac­te­ria for a po­si­tion of promi­nence in the world of extremo­philes. But high tem­per­a­ture may or may not have been a fac­tor in CD-pha­gia, as most Ge­ot­richum strains pre­fer 25° for growth.

Here's an­other link to a ver­sion of the story in the British news­pa­per, The Tele­graph. For a photo of the "indestruc­tible" CD, click here.

From Lon­don, a reader of this blog sent us the im­ages be­low doc­u­ment­ing the re­sult of fun­gal in­va­sion of his prized CD col­lec­tion.