User:Ana Gallego Cortés/sandbox

Assignment #5: Final Edition
Original- Deinococcus radiodurans

Applications

Deinococcus has been genetically engineered for use in bioremediation to consume and digest solvents and heavy metals, even in a highly radioactive site.

While it is resistant to radiation, it is vulnerable to other hazardous products, such as toluene, and inspired a search for a tougher extremophile. The mercuric reductase gene has been cloned from Escherichia coli into Deinococcus to detoxify the ionic mercury residue frequently found in radioactive waste generated from nuclear weapons manufacture. Those researchers developed a strain of Deinococcus that could detoxify both mercury and toluene in mixed radioactive wastes.

The Craig Venter Institute has used a system derived from the rapid DNA repair mechanisms of D. radiodurans to assemble synthetic DNA fragments into chromosomes, with the ultimate goal of producing a synthetic organism they call Mycoplasma laboratorium.

In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song "It's a Small World" into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later. However, since only a small portion of the information can be stored in DNA of D. radiodurans, several species had to be created, each holding a different part of the song and species needed to be kept segregated over time. If species are evolving together after a number of generations certain species will emerge dominant and others will become extinct and parts of the encoded message which were stored in extinct species will be lost.

Edit- Deinococcus radiodurans

Applications

Deinococcus radiodurans has shown to have a great potential to be used in different fields of investigation. Not only D.radiodurans has been genetically modified for bioremediation applications, but also it has been discovered that it could perform a major role in biomedical research and in Nanotechnology.

Bioremediation refers to any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, plants or the enzymes derived from them to return an environment altered by contaminants to its natural condition. Large areas of soils, sediments and groundwater are contaminated with radionuclides, heavy metals and toxic solvents. There are microorganisms that are able to decontaminate soils with heavy metals by inmobilizing them, but in the case of nuclear waste, ionizing radiation limits the amount of microorganisms that can be useful. In this sense, D. radiodurans, due to its characteristics, can be used for the treatment of nuclear energy waste. Deinococcus radiodurans has been genetically engineered to consume and digest solvents and heavy metals in these radioactive environments. The mercuric reductase gene has been cloned from Escherichia coli into Deinococcus to detoxify the ionic mercury residue frequently found in radioactive waste generated from nuclear weapons manufacture. Those researchers developed a strain of Deinococcus that could detoxify both mercury and toluene in mixed radioactive wastes. Moreover, a gene encoding a non-specific acid phosphatase from Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi and the alkaline phosphatase gene from Sphingomonas have been introduced in strains of D.radiodurans for the bioprecipitation of uranium in acid and alkaline solutions, respectively.

In the biomedical field, Deinococcus radiodurans could be used as a model to study the processes that lead to aging and cancer. The main causes of these physiological changes are related to the damage in DNA, RNA and proteins resulting from oxidative stress, the weakening of antioxidant defence and the inability of repair mechanisms to deal with the damage originated by reactive oxygen species, also known as ROS. To this extent, D.radiodurans mechanisms of protection against oxidative damage and of DNA reparation could be the starting points in research aimed to develop medical procedures to prevent aging and cancer. Some lines of investigation are focused on the application of D. radiodurans antioxidant systems in human cells to prevent ROS damaging and the study of the development of resistance to radiation in tumoral cells.

A nanotechnological application of D.radiodurans in the synthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles has also been described. Whereas chemical and physical methods to produce these nanoparticles are expensive and generate a huge amount of pollutants, biosynthetic processes represent an ecofriendly and cheaper alternative. The importance of these nanoparticles relies on their medical applications as they have been demonstrated to exhibit activity against pathogenic bacteria, antifouling effects and cytotoxicity to tumoral cells.

Moreover, there are other uncommon applications of Deinococcus radiodurans. The Craig Venter Institute has used a system derived from the rapid DNA repair mechanisms of D. radiodurans to assemble synthetic DNA fragments into chromosomes, with the ultimate goal of producing a synthetic organism they call Mycoplasma laboratorium. In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song "It's a Small World" into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later.

Ana Gallego Cortés (talk) 01:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

References