There are still creatures living in the Dead Sea

A miraculous mushroom managed to survive in the extremely salty waters of the Dead Sea. Its discovery could lead to new advances in gene technology, in order to create food crops that can be grown on saline soil.

Mushroom species Eurotium herbariorum can withstand saline "salty" salt concentration in the Dead Sea - up to 340 grams per liter of water - about 10 times more than in other seas. Most creatures on earth suffer much less salinity, they will lose water and die if exposed to too much salt.

But researchers are very interested in developing salty tolerant food crops, because saline soils are rising rapidly on Earth, leading to reduced food production.

When the soil is too salty, the water in the tree will be pulled out, and the tree will die. One solution to this situation is to produce glycerol, which prevents water from escaping from plant cells. Thus, researchers at the University of Haifa, Israel isolated a gene called EhHOG (regulation of glycerol production) in the fungus and implanted it into the brewing yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

As a result, genetically engineered yeast has been able to withstand salt better than usual, and also withstands higher or lower temperatures. If the EhHOG gene was introduced into plants, the team could help plants tolerate salt better.

However Tim Flowers, a plant physiologist at the University of Sussex, UK, says mushrooms are far different from food crops, and therefore there is no reason to think that EhHOG will be useful for plant varieties. as with mushrooms, which means helping them with salt.