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. 2003 Jan 10;299(5604):254-6.
doi: 10.1126/science.1077865.

Ringlike structure of the Deinococcus radiodurans genome: a key to radioresistance?

Smadar Levin-Zaidman  1 , Joseph Englander, Eyal Shimoni, Ajay K Sharma, Kenneth W Minton, Abraham Minsky
Affiliations

Ringlike structure of the Deinococcus radiodurans genome: a key to radioresistance?

Smadar Levin-Zaidman et al. Science. .

Abstract

The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans survives ionizing irradiation and other DNA-damaging assaults at doses that are lethal to all other organisms. How D. radiodurans accurately reconstructs its genome from hundreds of radiation-generated fragments in the absence of an intact template is unknown. Here we show that the D. radiodurans genome assumes an unusual toroidal morphology that may contribute to its radioresistance. We propose that, because of restricted diffusion within the tightly packed and laterally ordered DNA toroids, radiation-generated free DNA ends are held together, which may facilitate template-independent yet error-free joining of DNA breaks.

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Comment in

  • The structure of D. radiodurans.
    Battista JR, Cox MM, Daly MJ, Narumi I, Radman M, Sommer S. Battista JR, et al. Science. 2003 Oct 24;302(5645):567-8; author reply 567-8. doi: 10.1126/science.302.5645.567. Science. 2003. PMID: 14576403 No abstract available.

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