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."

Comments

minor nit

[tps12]

The plural of "bacteria" is actually not "bacterium," but rather "bacterii" (analogous to "virii").