Radiodurans

Looks like D. radiodurans resistance to radiation may have a lot more to do with protein stability than thought. Everyone used to think it was all really good DNA repair systems. Well, who’d have thought, turns out those DNA repair systems are proteins (hehe) and not just any protein, but ones with some interesting manganese chemistry going on. Radiodurans has always been one of my favorite bacteria (I’m a micro major, I am allowed). This might really help a lot of things, drugs for radiation poisoning, and radiation therapy come to mind. If you could target the good cells with some drugs to improve radioresistance and then hit the cancer that would be great.