Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 Apr 1;105(13):5139-44.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0800966105. Epub 2008 Mar 24.

Extreme resistance of bdelloid rotifers to ionizing radiation

Eugene Gladyshev  1 , Matthew Meselson
Affiliations

Extreme resistance of bdelloid rotifers to ionizing radiation

Eugene Gladyshev et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Rotifers of class Bdelloidea are common invertebrate animals with highly unusual characteristics, including apparently obligate asexuality, the ability to resume reproduction after desiccation at any life stage, and a paucity of transposable genetic elements of types not prone to horizontal transmission. We find that bdelloids are also extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation (IR). Reproduction of the bdelloids Adineta vaga and Philodina roseola is much more resistant to IR than that of Euchlanis dilatata, a rotifer belonging to the desiccation-intolerant and facultatively sexual class Monogononta, and all other animals for which we have found relevant data. By analogy with the desiccation- and radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, we suggest that the extraordinary radiation resistance of bdelloid rotifers is a consequence of their evolutionary adaptation to survive episodes of desiccation encountered in their characteristic habitats and that the damage incurred in such episodes includes DNA breakage that is repaired upon rehydration. Such breakage and repair may have maintained bdelloid chromosomes as colinear pairs and kept the load of transposable genetic elements low and may also have contributed to the success of bdelloid rotifers in avoiding the early extinction suffered by most asexuals.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Dose dependence of bdelloid and monogonont reproduction. Data on reproduction are from Table 1. (A) Parental reproduction. (B) F1 reproduction. Shown are A. vaga (triangles), P. roseola (squares), and E. dilatata (circles). Relative fecundity (filled symbols), relative fertility (empty symbols), and DSBs per Mbp (empty diamonds) are indicated. Left vertical axis shows relative fecundity or fertility; right vertical axis shows DSBs per Mbp; horizontal axis shows dose in Gy.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
DNA double-strand breakage by IR in A. vaga. (A) Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Yeast chromosome molecular weight markers are in kbp. Doses are in Gy. (B) Photometric scans of gel lanes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ricci C. Ecology of bdelloids: How to be successful. Hydrobiologia. 1987;147:117–127.
    1. Ricci C. Anhydrobiotic capabilities of bdelloid rotifers. Hydrobiologia. 1998;387/388:321–326.
    1. Kikawada T, Minakawa N, Watanabe M, Okuda T. Factors inducing successful anhydrobiosis in the African chironomid Polypedilum vanderplanki: Significance of the larval tubular nest. Integr Comp Biol. 2005;45:710–714. - PubMed
    1. Clegg JS. Cryptobiosis: A peculiar state of biological organization. Comp Biochem Phys B. 2001;128:613–624. - PubMed
    1. Wallace RL, Snell TW, Ricci C, Nogrady T. Rotifera: Biology, Ecology, and Systematics. Vol 1. Leiden, The Netherlands: Backhuys; 2006.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources