How big can a gene be? Ten years ago in the early days of genome sequencing, researchers scoured the genomes of 580 bacterial and archaeal species for large genes. They found that 0.2% of all genes identified are longer than 5,000 bases and 80 of them are “giant genes,” those larger than 15,000 bases. To…
Meet Deinococcus radiodurans, one of the world’s toughest bacterium. It’s an extremophile and one of the most radiation-resistant organisms known on Earth. This hardy little bacterium can survive over a thousand times the amount of radiation that would kill a human. Its tolerance to many harsh conditions has earned itself the name “Conan the Bacterium,”…