Researchers at the University of Tokyo sequenced the genome of one of the hardiest species, Ramazzottius varieornatus, looking for genes unique to it that might explain its extreme resistance, then tested one candidate directly in human cells grown in the lab.
Takuma Hashimoto's team identified a tardigrade-specific protein, named Dsup, that binds to DNA and appears to physically shield it. When they inserted the gene for Dsup into cultured human cells and exposed them to X-rays, DNA damage dropped by about 40 percent compared with cells without it.
It was a direct demonstration that a single gene from an animal with no close relation to humans could measurably protect human DNA from radiation when simply inserted into a human cell. The effect was shown only in cultured cells in a dish, and whether Dsup could work safely inside a living human body, or be delivered there at all, remains unexplored.
Read the original study
Hashimoto et al., Nature Communications, 2016 · doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808
One tiny animal's gene protected human DNA.
Source
- Hashimoto, T., Horikawa, D. D., Saito, Y., Kuwahara, H., Kozuka-Hata, H., Shin-I, T., Minakuchi, Y., Ohishi, K., Motoyama, A., Aizu, T., Enomoto, A., Kondo, K., Tanaka, S., Hara, Y., Koshikawa, S., Sagara, H., Miura, T., Yokobori, S.-I., Miyagawa, K., . . . Kunieda, T. (2016). Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein. Nature Communications, 7, 12808. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808