{"id":100268,"date":"2019-12-29T18:23:45","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T02:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/tardigrade-protein-helps-human-dna-withstand-radiation"},"modified":"2019-12-29T20:39:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T04:39:23","slug":"tardigrade-protein-helps-human-dna-withstand-radiation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/tardigrade-protein-helps-human-dna-withstand-radiation","title":{"rendered":"Tardigrade protein helps human DNA withstand radiation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tardigrade-protein-helps-human-dna-withstand-radiation3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The researchers wanted to know how tardigrades protected themselves against such harsh conditions. So Kunieda and his colleagues began by sequencing the genome of <i>Ramazzottius varieornatus<\/i>, a species that is particularly stress tolerant. It\u2019s easier to study processes within the tardigrade\u2019s cells when the animal\u2019s genome is inserted into mammalian cells, says Kunieda. So researchers manipulated cultures of human cells to produce pieces of the water bear\u2019s inner machinery to determine which parts were actually giving the animals their resistance.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, Kunieda and his colleagues discovered that a protein known as Dsup prevented the animal\u2019s DNA from breaking under the stress of radiation and desiccation. And they also found that the tardigrade-tinged human cells were able to suppress X-ray induced damage by about 40%.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cProtection and repair of DNA is a fundamental component of all cells and a central aspect in many human diseases, including cancer and ageing,\u201d says Ingemar J\u00f6nsson, an evolutionary ecologist who studies tardigrades at Kristianstad University in Sweden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The researchers wanted to know how tardigrades protected themselves against such harsh conditions. So Kunieda and his colleagues began by sequencing the genome of Ramazzottius varieornatus, a species that is particularly stress tolerant. It\u2019s easier to study processes within the tardigrade\u2019s cells when the animal\u2019s genome is inserted into mammalian cells, says Kunieda. So researchers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100272,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100268\/revisions\/100272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}