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Conan the Bacterium
An anonymous reader writes "The world's toughest organism, able to withstand thousands of time more radiation than a human, is reported by the Weizmann Institute to have its secret to survival as a tightly packed DNA ring. Their Science article indicates that radiation-induced breakages are held tightly packed rather than floating off into the intracellular fluid. The bacteria,Deinococcus radiodurans, was discovered decades ago in canned food that was sterilized using radiation. Red patches appeared in the cans - colonies of the bacterium - setting off questions as to how it could have survived."
They can have a sample of the chlorox resistant mildew in my shower. I think its started feeding on the bleach, rather than being harmed by it.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
... that this stuff doesn't get too close to my homebrew.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
The plural of "bacteria" is actually not "bacterium," but rather "bacterii" (analogous to "virii").
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
The reference, in case you didn't get it, is from this: Conan the Librarian
What's wrong with Conan the Barbarian? It's even alliterative, and alludes to survivorship. But you knew this
... but if it has ancient origins, isn't it odd it didn't evolve away from mechianisms designed for an absent danger, which I assume entail some cost to the organism? The writer does mention the resistance might be good for drought also. Fascinating.
I like that the name "radiodurans" encapsulates literally the bacteria's claim to fame. How about "Radioduran the Radical"?
"The red bacterium can withstand 1.5 million rads-a thousand times more than any other life form on Earth and three thousand that of humans" -- do they mean all life forms complex and bacteria plus other single-celled organisms? If so, I would indeed wonder whether this bacteria came from somewhere else
...inject it into Keith Ritchards and see if it survives!
Not that they're immune from evolution, but I'd imagine that a species with a much lower mutation rate than normal is not going to change very often.
these are the best bacteria to store information in. altho is 1000x human rad resistance that good ? what is cockroaches' rating ?
For a numerical comparison I found some rough numbers for what other living organisms can survive. The unit of radiation used is a Gray, which is the unit used to measure the absorbed dosage of radiation. It does not tell relate the biological effects of that radiation.
These numbers are ones I received from a radiation safety lecture at CERN. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the numbers. But remember, they are obtained from non-controlled experiments (like nuclear accidents) and are an estimates of the amount of dosage needed to kill said organism.
Now according to the Science magazine article, the bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans can stand up to 15,000 Gy of radiation!
Hey. I read an article by that title about this when I was in high school. That was at least 4 years ago. Thats old news, even by /. standards.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Really!! THis shit anit affected by bleach anymore.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
You can trust I'll be mentioning this to MY library! The LOC should offer something like this, though I shudder to guess what the licensing would cost.
The Latin ending -um (neuter singular) replaces the Greek -on when Latin borrows Greek words. But Bacterium (meaning "walking stick") wasn't really ever Latin. It got taken directly from the Greek and by convention switched to -um long after Latin was in affect dead. The neuter plural in both languages (For this declension) is -a
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
So much acrimony over a technology invented by children...
:)
What? You don't realize language is designed by kids? Go study the formation of new ones, usually the result of multiple societies being crammed together by the latest political upheaval. The parents make the pidgin, which is pretty terrible. The kids make the creole, which is astonishingly correct.
It's not that Virii is right or wrong. It's that Viruses is inconvenient to speak -- it adds a redundant syllable, especially if you try to tack on possession (viruses' make write nicely, but vi-ruh-sis-izz-izz is a nightmare).
We need a better way to say this, but we don't have a good way of converting "-us" into a plural. So we try -ii, based off what we saw happen in, er, some word somewhere -- perhapps based on symmetry with the i early in virus. But lots of other people call bullshit(ii), and demand justification and reasoning and bla bla bla.
Whatever. It's all made by kids to make it easy to say stuff. Quit acting like the world is going to come to and end if it's not precisely like the way a bunch of dead people spoke
--Dan
As remarkable a feature as this is, there surely must be a metabolism cost. It would be interesting to see the matabolism efficiency scores next to the radiation scores.
Table-ized A.I.
a gene transplant therapy from this tough little bug, and I've got it made. here I come, wheres the red button.