Circa 1999 this can lead to genetic editing that allows people to handle even a nuclear fallout level of radiation and even allow them to handle outer space better.<\/p>\n
Rockville, MD \u2014 No, it\u2019s not the cockroach, but rather a strain of pink bacteria that can survive 1.5 million rads of gamma irradiation \u2014 a dose 3,000 times the amount that would kill a human. This dose of radiation shreds the bacteria\u2019s genome into hundreds of pieces. The organism\u2019s remarkable ability to repair this DNA damage completely in a day and go on living offers researchers tantalizing clues to better understanding the mechanism of cellular repair. Advances in this area could in turn improve our understanding of cancer which is frequently caused by unrepaired DNA damage. Genetically engineering the microbe could lead to improved ways to cleanup pollution and to new industrial processes.<\/p>\n
U.S. Department of Energy-funded researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) describe the complete genetic sequence of the bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans in the November 19 issue of Science.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a significant accomplishment,\u201d Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson said. \u201cThe Department of Energy began microbial genome work to support bold science and to help meet our unique environment and energy mission needs. Besides the insights into the way cells work, this new research may help provide a new safe and inexpensive tool for some of the nation\u2019s most difficult cleanup challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Circa 1999 this can lead to genetic editing that allows people to handle even a nuclear fallout level of radiation and even allow them to handle outer space better. Rockville, MD \u2014 No, it\u2019s not the cockroach, but rather a strain of pink bacteria that can survive 1.5 million rads of gamma irradiation \u2014 a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412,873],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-nuclear-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149431","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\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}