Nature Communications (Sep 2016)

Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein

  • 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,
  • Takekazu Kunieda

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

Read online

Tardigrades are resistant to extreme environmental conditions including dehydration, radiation and the vacuum of space. Here the authors present a high-quality genome which displays minimal horizontal gene transfer, and identify the unique tardigrade protein Dsup which suppresses DNA damage.