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Tough enough for mars, but deinococcus is from earth |
| TheAllINeed.com |
(NC&T/PLoS) The first was for the Guinness World Records-holder Deinococcus radiodurans, which for 50 years has been the subject of extensive investigations aimed at solving the mystery of how this microbe and its close relatives survive immense doses of x-rays and gamma-rays.
Most surprisingly, many of the unique D. radiodurans genes that were strongly implicated in resistance over the last decade have turned out to be unrelated to its survival, and are not present in D. geothermalis. Using computer-based systems to compare the D. geothermalis genome sequence with the sequence of D. radiodurans, a minimal set of genes which encode extreme resistance was defined. Far fewer genes than initially believed appear to be responsible for the extreme resistance trait, which bodes well for the long-term prospects of conferring radiation resistance to other organisms. The phenomenal resistance of Deinococcus bacteria has given rise to numerous descriptions of their origin, including that they evolved on Mars under harsh cosmic radiation. The present analysis firmly places the origin of Deinococcus bacteria on Earth, where the evolutionary steps that led to their survival mechanisms clearly occurred in their terrestrial ancestors - most likely in a desert near you.
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