Many disease-causing bacteria have been mutating, becoming antibiotic resistant, and forcing us to find new ways to fight them. How do organisms achieve this feat to survive the hostile environments created by drugs and other factors such as radiation? Scientists attempted to analyze this with the help of Escherichia coli and its ability to resist ionizing radiation.
Understanding E.coli’s radiation resistance and its ability to repair damaged DNA is a huge step toward identifying approaches to facilitate recovery from radiation in other organisms, including human beings. “What our work shows is that the repair systems can adapt and those adaptations contribute a lot to radiation resistance,” Professor Michael Cox from the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in a statement.
Read the full, original story: Scientists Create Radiation Resistant E.Coli To Learn How Bacteria Develop Antibiotic Resistance
