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Metabolism of ionizing radiation was theorized as early as 1956 by the Russian microbiologist S. I. Kuznetsov. [ 1 ] Beginning in the 1990s, researchers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant uncovered some 200 species of apparently radiotrophic fungi containing the pigment melanin on the walls of the reactor room and in the surrounding soil.
When dried and frozen, Deinococcus radiodurans could survive 140,000 grays, or units of X-and gamma-ray radiation, which is 28,000 times greater than the amount of radiation that could kill a person.
Radioactive decay has been put to use in the technique of radioisotopic labeling, which is used to track the passage of a chemical substance through a complex system (such as a living organism). A sample of the substance is synthesized with a high concentration of unstable atoms.
Bacterial motility is the ability of bacteria to move independently using metabolic energy. Most motility mechanisms that evolved among bacteria also evolved in parallel among the archaea. Most rod-shaped bacteria can move using their own power, which allows colonization of new environments and discovery of new resources for survival.
Radiotrophic fungi are fungi that can perform the hypothetical biological process called radiosynthesis, which means using ionizing radiation as an energy source to drive metabolism. It has been claimed that radiotrophic fungi have been found in extreme environments such as in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant .
A tin of meat was exposed to a dose of radiation that was thought to kill all known forms of life, but the meat subsequently spoiled, and D. radiodurans was isolated. [ 1 ] The complete DNA sequence of D. radiodurans was published in 1999 by The Institute for Genomic Research .
Pyrolobus fumarii (Latin for "fire lobe of the chimney" [1]) is a species of archaea known for living and reproducing at extremely high temperatures that kill most organisms. [1] [2] P. fumarii is known as a hyperthermophile obligately chemolithoautotroph. In the simplest terms, this archaea grows best in warm temperatures ranging from 80 °C ...
Thermococcus gammatolerans is a gram-negative archaeon [1] extremophile and the most radiation-resistant organism known to exist.. As reported in 2003 the type strain EJ3 T was taken from a submarine hydrothermal vent in the Guaymas Basin off the coast of Baja California at a depth of about 2,600 m by submersible Nautile during the 1991 Guaynaut cruise.