Biology of Extreme Radiation Resistance: The Way of Deinococcus radiodurans

Abstract

The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans is a champion of extreme radiation resistance that is accounted for by a highly efficient protection against proteome, but not genome, damage. A well-protected functional proteome ensures cell recovery from extensive radiation damage to other cellular constituents by molecular repair and turnover processes, including an efficient repair of disintegrated DNA. Therefore, cell death correlates with radiationinduced protein damage, rather than DNA damage, in both robust and standard species. From the reviewed biology of resistance to radiation and other sources of oxidative damage, we conclude that the impact of protein damage on the maintenance of life has been largely underestimated in biology and medicine.

Biochemical and Functional Characterization of the NurA-HerA Complex from Deinococcus radiodurans

“…Given that mesophilic features were seen for DrHerA ATPase activity, we also performed nuclease assays at 30,35,40,45,50,55, and 60°C; the optimum reaction temperature was around 55°C (Fig. 5C).…”

“…Deinococcaceae, an extremely radioresistant bacterial family, has robust DSB repair capacity (30)(31)(32)(33). These bacteria use the RecFOR pathway as the major recombinational DNA repair pathway and naturally lack RecBCD/AddAB systems (31,34).…”

Purification, crystallization and preliminary crystallographic investigation of FrnE, a disulfide oxidoreductase fromDeinococcus radiodurans

“…It has the ability to tolerate massive damage to its genome without any measurable loss of cell viability (Battista, 2000). The extraordinary radioresistance of D. radiodurans has been attributed to many factors, including the high copy number of the multipartite genome, efficient DNA strand-break repair and the presence of carotenoids, pyrroloquinoline quinone and intracellular manganese complexes (Misra et al, 2004;Rajpurohit et al, 2008;Daly, 2009;Krisko & Radman, 2013). Recently, it has been argued that the protection of proteins from oxidative damage is the key to the radiation resistance shown by D. radiodurans (Daly, 2009;Krisko & Radman, 2013).…”

“…The extraordinary radioresistance of D. radiodurans has been attributed to many factors, including the high copy number of the multipartite genome, efficient DNA strand-break repair and the presence of carotenoids, pyrroloquinoline quinone and intracellular manganese complexes (Misra et al, 2004;Rajpurohit et al, 2008;Daly, 2009;Krisko & Radman, 2013). Recently, it has been argued that the protection of proteins from oxidative damage is the key to the radiation resistance shown by D. radiodurans (Daly, 2009;Krisko & Radman, 2013). Dsb proteins have been shown to be the part of the cell machinery that protects proteins from oxidative damage in other systems (Roszczenko et al, 2012;Denoncin et al, 2014).…”

Coherent X-ray diffractive imaging on the single-cell-level of microbial samples

“…The bacterium is nonpathogenic, nonmotile, red-pigmented, Grampositive and well-known due to its outstanding resistance to ionizing-radiation and oxidative stress [7,51,55,56,164,169,180,184,277]. For instance, D. radiodurans R1 reaches a D 10 value of 10 kGy [51], i.e.…”