Team:Osaka/Project

Project Details

DNA damage tolerance

D. radiodurans

The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans shows remarkable resistance to a range of DNA damage caused by ionizing radiation, desiccation, UV radiation, oxidizing agents, and electrophilic mutagens. It is an aerobically-growing bacterium that is most famous for its extreme resistance to ionizing radiation; it not only can survive acute exposures to gamma radiation that exceed 15,000 Gy, but it can also grow continuously in the presence of chronic radiation (60 Gy/hour) without any effect on its growth rate or ability to express cloned genes. For comparison, E. coli can withstand up to 200 Gy, and an acute exposure of just 5-10 Gy is lethal to a human being.

We explored various genes from D. radiodurans, implicated in its remarkable DNA damage resistance. By BioBricking selected genes and transforming them into E. coli, we hoped to confer additional DNA damage tolerance to the host cells.