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Scientific Importance
The genus Deinococcus is renowned for being the most radioactive resistant bacteria. They have the ability to absorb ionizing and UV radiation and withstand damage from a range of sources, which can include desiccation and oxidative stress. These characteristics and the ability to resist harsh environments has proved to be useful to researchers. Deinococcus has been applied to the task of cleaning and removing nuclear waste. They have shown the ability to precipitate heavy metals and toxins from nuclear waste in order to make removal easier. According to an experiment from Appukuttan et al. published in 2006, a Deinococcus species was introduced to a 0.8 Mm uranyl nitrate solution. After 6 hours, 90% of the uranium was bioprecipitated out of the solution. According to this study, this will provide an efficient and eco-friendly solution to nuclear cleanup and waste removal. Due to continued research and genomic sequencing of Deinococcus, its ability to be used as a model organism instead of Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae . This allows for researchers to have another diverse organism to experiment with.

Physiological Characteristization
D. marmoris is a Gram-positive, non-motile bacterium that is UV-tolerant and grows in aerobic conditions. The bacterium is coccus, or circle shaped, and its colony color ranges from pink to orange. It grows best in oligotrophic conditions, with high oxygen concentration and few nutrients from plant inhabitants. It was isolated from a sample of marble from continental Antarctica.

Growth media and technique
Researchers have found that D. marmoris grows best with little salt concentration (0-10% NaCl) and at low temperatures; it was cultured using a PYGV agar, which is composed of 20 mL of mineral salt solution along with yeast extract, peptone, and distilled water. Due to the organism’s psychrophilicity, researchers used a temperature of 15 °C for optimal growth conditions, and the optimal pH for growth of D. marmoris is neutral at 7.5. The temperature range at which the organism grew was 9°C - 18°C.

Metabolism
The metabolism of Deinococcus marmoris has not been researched extensively therefore must be inferred from known relatives in the same genus. The main carbon source for Deinococcus radiodurans is fructose which undergoes several catabolic reactions to eventually the TCA cycle and produces the molecules NADH and FADH for its electron transport chain and the eventual production of ATP. A byproduct of the production of ATP is O₂ which can be either endogenously or exogenously induced to create a reactive oxidative species (ROS ). The induction of O₂ into a ROS is by gamma irradiation which can be reduced with an abundance of Mn(II) inside the cell as the reduced form of Mn(IV). Mn(II) is able to reduce the amount of ROS in Deinococcus radiodurans because it acts as an antioxidant and assists other enzymatic reactions that reduce the total amount of ROS allowing the organism to survive in environments of high exposure to radiation. The metabolism of Deinococcus marmoris at this point in time is limited to the research that has been completed; however, what is currently known is that as part of the Deinococcus taxa the species must be radioactively resistant with similar mechanisms to reduce the amount of ROS inside the cell.