A paper “Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein” has published in Nature Communications. Yuji Kohara and Toshiaki Katayama from DBCLS has contributed to this work in the data analysis and the development of the genome database kumamushi.org which provides online database.

The open-access full paper can be found online at: http://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808

Takuma Hashimoto, Daiki D. Horikawa, Yuki Saito, Hirokazu Kuwahara, Hiroko Kozuka-Hata, Tadasu Shin-I, Yohei Minakuchi, Kazuko Ohishi, Ayuko Motoyama, Tomoyuki Aizu, Atsushi Enomoto, Koyuki Kondo, Sae Tanaka, Yuichiro Hara, Shigeyuki Koshikawa, Hiroshi Sagara, Toru Miura, Shin-ichi Yokobori, Kiyoshi Miyagawa, Yutaka Suzuki, Takeo Kubo, Masaaki Oyama, Yuji Kohara, Asao Fujiyama, Kazuharu Arakawa, Toshiaki Katayama, Atsushi Toyoda, and Takekazu Kunieda, “Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein”, Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/ncomms12808

Tardigrades, or water bears, are tiny aquatic creatures that can survive through incredible conditions including extraordinary high and low temperatures, vacuum and extremely high pressures, desiccation and intense radiation. Authors have decoded the entire genome of the tardigrade Ramazzottius varieornatus that is known to survive exposure to high doses of radiation. Using this full genome, authors found a new protein, Dsup (Damage Suppressor), that protects the DNA when it is irradiated even in the human cultured cells when the gene is transfected. The genomic data produced in this study could be a fundamental resource for medical, molecular and evolutional biology.