{"id":30359,"date":"2016-09-20T22:47:35","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T05:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/radiation-shield-found-hidden-in-water-bear-genome"},"modified":"2017-04-24T19:37:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T02:37:06","slug":"radiation-shield-found-hidden-in-water-bear-genome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/radiation-shield-found-hidden-in-water-bear-genome","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Radiation shield\u2019 found hidden in water bear genome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/radiation-shield-found-hidden-in-water-bear-genome.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tardigrades, tiny aquatic creatures found in habitats from backyard ponds to Antarctic glaciers, are tough enough to survive the radiation-fraught perils of space. But for a long time, scientists couldn\u2019t agree on why the animals\u2014also known as water bears\u2014are so hardy. Now, researchers have identified a gene that protects the tardigrades\u2019 DNA from radiation, BBC reports. The gene, called Dsup, showed its importance when researchers inserted it into human DNA strands and blasted them with x-rays. The modified genetic material suffered significantly less damage, they report today in. Scientists hope this finding will help them one day protect another animal\u2014us\u2014against radiation.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/sifter\/radiation-shield-found-hidden-water-bear-genome\">http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/sifter\/radiation-shield-found...ear-genome<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tardigrades, tiny aquatic creatures found in habitats from backyard ponds to Antarctic glaciers, are tough enough to survive the radiation-fraught perils of space. But for a long time, scientists couldn\u2019t agree on why the animals\u2014also known as water bears\u2014are so hardy. Now, researchers have identified a gene that protects the tardigrades\u2019 DNA from radiation, BBC [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-habitats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30359","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\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49847,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30359\/revisions\/49847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}