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Wait, I’m still not clear on exactly how these protect against ionizing radiation. Is there some unique structure of these proteins that act as shielding?
by neerd 4y ago
Wait, I’m still not clear on exactly how these protect against ionizing radiation. Is there some unique structure of these proteins that act as shielding?
- unloco 4y agohttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31505739/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31505739/ This abstract talks a bit about tardigrades DNA repair and radiation damage avoidance, and possibilities of gene identification.
- folli 4y agoThe article is great in giving no scientific context and not even linking to a reference. I assume they talk about Dsup (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dsup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dsup), an enzyme preventing DNA breaks by stabilization. DNA breaks are caused by radiation and are what causes mutations (increased cancer risk) and in the extreme case cell death.
- lofatdairy 4y agoHonestly, I can't find the result referenced in the article, nor in a similar article posted to SCMP. It might be because I'm searching in English, didn't dig too deep. My guess is that they added a gene that codes for Dsup[^1]. I don't think Dsup is well characterized mechanistically. I think it probably mostly protects DNA from secondary damage from ionizing radiation[^2], so protection from radicals produced by ionizing radiation, rather than direct breaks to the DNA itself (though maybe, I'm not familiar with research in the field). [^1]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808 similar research noted in another comment as well. Note that most likely the novelty of the OP research is using CRISPR instead of the transfection method cited in the paper. [^2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6773438/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6773438/