Radiation damages DNA. For example, if we are exposed to too much radiation, we can get diseases such as cancer. But tardigrades are not affected by this. This is because they can repair the damage to their DNA, according toom the University of North Carolina. “We were surprised by what we saw,” says lead researcher Bob Goldstein. “The tardigrades are doing something we didn’t see coming.”
And that’s pretty special, because Goldstein has been studying tardigrades for 25 years. His lab has already discovered several tricks that the microorganisms use to survive conditions that would have been fatal for humans and most other animals.
All sorts of tricks
Sixty years ago, researchers discovered that tardigrades can survive radiation that is a thousand times stronger than what humans can handle. But how that was possible remained a mystery. Now the Americans have discovered that whatsapp database tardigrades are not immune to DNA damage. This is also damaged by ultraviolet radiation, but what tardigrades can do, and we cannot, is repair their DNA.
They do this by producing more repair genes. Unlike humans, tardigrades can increase the production of so-called DNA repair genes to such an extent that they become among the most common gene products in animals.
Repair genes
This came as a huge surprise to the researchers. “These animals have an incredibly strong response to radiation Разкриване на силата на застрахователния анализ: изчерпателно ръководство and that seems to be the secret to their extreme survival capacity,” says colleague Courtney Clark-Hachtel. This knowledge could also be of great use to other animals. “
What we learn about how tardigrades survive radiation could lead to new ideas about how we can protect other animals and be numbers microorganisms from harmful radiation.”has been made in France , where researchers found a new protein in tardigrades that protects their DNA. “It’s great to see the individual lab results corroborate each other’s findings,” Goldstein said.
