Bacteria Found in Nuclear Reactors Could Be the Secret to Faster, Cheaper Vaccines

The extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans was first discovered in 1956 at Oregon State University, where it was busy ruining a gamma ray experiment designed to sterilize a tin of ground meat. The “sterilized” meat spoiled, thanks to D. radiodurans and its preternatural durability in the face of radiation: The hearty microbe can withstand somewhere up to 5,000 gray (Gy), or about 1,500 times the dose that would kill a human being.

D. radiodurans is unusual even in the world of extremophiles, in that it has evolved not to thrive in one uniquely difficult environment but in many. (The extremophile microbe Pyrolobus fumarii, to cite a more common example, is found almost exclusively near hydrothermal vents in the deep sea.) Scientists have called D. radiodurans “a robust ‘generalist’” capable of persevering amid prolonged exposure to everything from toxic chemicals and corrosive acids to desiccating desert heats and subzero temperatures. In the decades since decomposing that meat, colonies of the bacteria have been found occupying the coolant water tanks of nuclear reactors and thriving improbably on the weathered granite of Antarctica’s dry valleys. They’ve faced exposure to solar radiation and the vacuum of space onboard a European Space Agency satellite and have survived punishing simulations of life on Mars at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne.

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