tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10092066.post7361729614366879442..comments2024-01-08T00:40:50.918-08:00Comments on The Dragon's Tales: Does Very High Dessication Tolerance Increase Radiation Resistance in Microbes?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10092066.post-50053437199175458752015-12-23T10:39:57.776-08:002015-12-23T10:39:57.776-08:00Well... the answer to the title is actually really...Well... the answer to the title is actually really cool--more so then this study implies. It's been long established that dessication resistance == radiation resistance (not just for bacteria, but also small organisms like the water bear). Not only that, but we know molecularly -how- and -why-. All this first mostly discovered from the Deinococcus genus of bacteria, and then generalized among others (particularly radiodurans). Deinococcus can take around 6 kGy of radiation (or over a month of dessication) with nearly 90% survival, at room temp, due to manganese hoarding which protects the protein content of the cell from ionization, and specialty, advanced double strand break DNA repair enzymes that leverage the multiploidy nature of the bacterial genome to repair via really clever error checking mechanisms (like ECC RAM or harddrives in RAID 1). Giving either of these systems to say E. coli significantly increases it's radiation -and- dessication resistance upwards towards an order of magnitude. It's pretty wild, and has been looked at in regards to astro- and xenobiology implications for awhile now. On the flipside, removing these pathways from Deinococcus pretty well eliminates it's radiation -and- dessication resistance. <br /><br />This study is cool due to where they looked, more than anything--finding similar bacteria in a more Martian like setting (though of course not actively alive in a frozen state). Very good news for terraforming prospects, with a bit of genetic engineering. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com