Tardigrades or water bears are extremely small aquatic animals that can tolerate extreme dehydration and once dehydrated can tolerate a variety of extremes. The most tolerant species is Ramazzottius varieornatus. This species has lost the gene pathways that promote stress and have a high expression of species unique proteins. Tardigrade unique proteins were used to test X-ray induced DNA damage on cultured human cells and the damage was suppressed by 40%. These unique proteins are the start of understanding how tardigrades are able to withstand so many physical stressors and environments once they become dehydrated. This can enable the study of new genes and mechanisms that can be used to stand high stress and be used for protection.
More can be read about this at: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160920/ncomms12808/full/ncomms12808.html
I already have my outline for this article done. You beat me to it! I'll probably still write about it anyway. I thought this was really interesting, as well and am really curious to see how this will play out with radiation treatment.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting and the fact that the aquatic animal being tested is so small is also pretty cool and out of the box. I'm also curious how this research will benefit and induce so many other projects. What other type of cell damage do you think would be plausible to test aside from radiation?
ReplyDeleteIf the tardigrade-unique proteins can improve people's tolerance to radiation, I wonder how it would affect doctors' approaches to patients. Maybe it would allow them to be more aggressive and successful with treatment if it were known that the patient could withstand radiation at greater levels.
ReplyDeleteSome questions:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "This species has lost the gene pathways that promote stress and have a high expression of species unique proteins."
Are there pathways that promote stress? Like what? What would be the function of such a pathway? What is the significance of "Species-unique proteins"?
"These unique proteins are the start of understanding how tardigrades are able to withstand so many physical stressors and environments once they become dehydrated."
Do the authors have any idea how the proteins work? Do they resist damage or repair it?