Why does mold have different colors?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mold is a type of fungus, which means it’s related to mushrooms. And it can be kind of pretty, if you’re not grossed out by it. Sometimes mold is green or white or even pink! Why does it have so many colors? We asked professor Jonathan Schilling from the University of Minnesota to help us find the answer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um.
0:06.6	Answering those questions that make you go, um, um, moment of um, um, come to you from APM Studios. I'm Eunice the unicorn.
0:31.4	Um.
0:33.8	Hi, hello. I'm Eunice. Oh, I said that already. Um, okay, well, some fun facts about me. I sneeze sparkles. I love grapes. And, oh, and my favorite color is rainbow. Yep. Okay. Is that cheating? Because it's all the colors? Nah, I'm magic. I can do what I want.
0:59.0	Oh, and I'm not just a magic unicorn. I said I was a unicorn, right? Well, I'm not just a magic
1:05.9	unicorn. I'm also a budding microbiologist. That's just a fancy word for someone who studies really tiny stuff like germs.
1:14.3	I'm taking microbiology classes at Unicorn U to study all the things cute and tiny.
1:20.4	Sometimes I combine my love of all the colors and my love of tiny things to make micro-raimbows.
1:27.6	Here, look in this microscope. See this tiny rainbow? and my love of tiny things to make micro-raimboes.
1:29.4	Here, look in this microscope.
1:31.8	See this tiny rainbow?
1:35.8	Well, it's made of grains of sand from different beaches.
1:40.2	We got green sand, pink sand, red sand.
1:42.4	Oh, and see this slide?
1:47.9	It's my multicolor mold collection. You know, mold, the stuff that grows on old food and in wet places, we've got yellow mold, white, green, pink. My favorite is all of them.
1:57.0	Do you know why there are lots of different colors? No, I'm really asking, do you know why?
2:02.0	Because I have no idea.
2:04.1	My pal Max asked too, why does mold have different colors?
2:08.5	Let's ask someone who knows a lot about this.
2:13.8	If you like molds to some degree, they're kind of pretty because they have lots of colors.
2:18.3	I'm Jonathan Schilling at the University of Minnesota in the College of Biological Sciences.
2:25.3	For one, the fungi are more similar to us than they are to plants.
	...

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