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Imagine a bacterium that can survive in the most extreme of conditions. Well, you don't have to imagine because it actually exists. Deinococcus radiodurans is able to withstand drought conditions, environments of low nutrients and extreme heat. But what's most interesting about this bacterium is it's ability survive being exposed to 1.2 million rads in gamma radiation, which is about 1000 times what it would takes to kill a human being.
The bacteria is usually seen as spherical or tetrads.
D.radiodurans bacateria, is gram positive bacteria, is nonsporulating, has diameter of 1.5 to 3.5 µm and grows in tetrad from.
The red, spherical bacterium was discovered nearly fifty years ago in a can of ground meat that spoiled despite having been sterilized by radiation. Today, scientists are searching for ways to exploit the bacterium's remarkable talents. They believe D. radiodurans will prove useful in cleaning up toxic waste and testing hypotheses about life in extreme environments, among other things.An efficient system for repairing DNA is what makes the microbe so tough. High doses of radiation shatter the D. radiodurans genome, but the organism stitches the fragments back together, sometimes in just a few hours. The repaired genome appears to be as good as new
Deinococcus radiodurans was named The Most Radiation-Resistant lifeform on earth by the Guinness World Records.
This bacteria is found in the ground and in nuclear reactors. The bacteria is able to survive in these habitats because of it is able to withstand the extreme temperature, drought conditions and extreme radiation found in these habitats.
This video explains how the Deinococcus radiodurans is able to survive in extreme conditions and it outlines another interesting ability of the bacteria, which is its ability to break down plant biomass.
