People can work out resistance to radiation

In a nuclear explosion or an accident at a nuclear power plant, people are exposed to dangerous doses of radioactive radiation that lead to cancer and cardiovascular diseases (not to mention other health problems). But scientists were able to grow a strain of bacteria that can self-repair after exposure to radioactive radiation - and this discovery applies to us.

Radiation leads to diseases including through damage to our DNA. Michael Cox, a biochemist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, took a group of E. coli bacteria and bombarded her with radiation, until 99% of the microbes died - and the survivors raised a new population. Repeating this procedure twenty times, the scientists obtained a strain of E. coli, able to recover after radiation damage, four times stronger than their ancestors could withstand.

Cox and his team analyzed 69 known mutations that allowed microbes to be so well cured after such radiation. The human body "fixes" its DNA in much the same ways as bacteria. It is important that the "repair systems" of DNA are able to adapt to the new conditions, and these mechanisms of adaptation make a big contribution to the resistance to radiation.

But in this process there are many unknown. "The superpower resistance we observe is a complex phenotype. In our data, apparently, there are many additional mechanisms that we are just going to pull out, "the scientist says.

But if we learn how E. coli is recovering from radiation damage, we can not only grow special bacterial strains to eliminate radioactive waste, but create new genetic engineering tools for cosmonauts exposed to high levels of radiation in outer space.