Pluto is the microbiology side of Charon. Melanised fungi and other polyextremophiles thrive around Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4, the Nevada test site and operating reactor pools, and may use melanin to tolerate, or even harvest, ionising radiation. No one has looked for them systematically at Maralinga or Emu Field. Pluto asks what lives there, and what its pigments could be used for.
Work so far
- Metagenomic study design: 16S amplicon sequencing with random-forest classification (after MacGregor et al., 2024), weighing field sequencing on an Oxford Nanopore MinION against WSU's NGS Facility and the Ramaciotti Centre.
- Lab methods: DNA extraction (DNeasy PowerSoil Pro, ZymoBIOMICS) with a 1600CPS centrifuge and bead beater that run on Charon's field power; Nikon Eclipse Si and Archimedes Em1 microscopy, with macro and photomicrography on an OM TG-7 and Nikon Z5II.
- A radiotolerant atlas: published growth thresholds and doses for radiotrophic organisms, set against measured contamination at Maralinga and Emu Field.
- Policy brief, Microbes as Threats and Tools for Australian Nuclear Infrastructure (2026): microbial corrosion of reactors and spacecraft, and three uses for extremophile pigments: radioresistant materials, biosensing and bioremediation, and radioprophylactics.