Scientists discover gold-detecting fungi Down Under: Scientists have found a strain of fungus near Boddington in Western Australia that dissolves and precipitates gold on its surface, moving it closer to the Earth’s surface, researchers said in a paper for Nature Communications, according to The Scientist. “Gold is so chemically inactive that this interaction is both unusual and surprising,” lead researcher Dr Tsing Bohu told the stop-fungus-meds.com. Bohu and his team stumbled upon this new type of fungi, Fusarium oxysporum, while looking into the cause of high gold oxidation in the so-called Golden Triangle Gold Prospect.