Tiny Worms Living Near Chernobyl Have Evolved a Remarkable New Talent
www.sciencealert.com
Microscopic worms that live their lives in the highly radioactive environment of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) appear to do so completely free of radiation damage.

Tiny worms living in the radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) surprisingly show no signs of radiation damage in their genes. Researchers compared the worms’ genomes to those from non- irradiated areas and found no mutations caused by radiation.

This doesn’t mean the zone is safe, but suggests these worms have remarkable resilience to radiation. Studying these worms might provide insights into DNA repair mechanisms that could benefit human health research, such as understanding why some people are more susceptible to cancers caused by DNA damage.

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Natural selection at work! (Because the ones that were vulnerable to radiation are already dead.)

    • dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      4 months ago

      …so sacrifice one generation to “Evolution” and the threat of nuclear war is cancelled? Yee haw, I guess?

      (/s, if that wasn’t abundantly clear)

  • MamboGator@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    First we hear about Chernobyl wolves being resistant to cancer, and now the worms. If they combined forces, we would probably need to go to the vet.

  • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
    0·
    4 months ago

    Unethical experiment, but it would be really interesting to see the effects of mildly higher background radiation like this on humans.

    As far as I know, we barely have any data on radiation exposure, and the data we have, is about ingesting caesium or high exposure over a short time.

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
    0·
    4 months ago

    Back in 2006 BBC Horizon made a documentary about our fear of radiation, it explained three different types of models for calculating radiation danger.

    1. The Linear-No-Threshold model: All radiation is dangerous, even small ammounts, easy to calculate, and will absolutely keep us safe from radiation, but will limit what we can do with radiation.

    2. A linear model with a threshold: Untill a certain level, radiation is a non-issue. If this is the case, we could allow for more uses of nuclear technology with less need for heavy shielding, this is however very hard to implement as radiation exposure is a factor of both time and intensity which would vary for everyone.

    3. A linear model with a negative bend at the start, small ammounts of radiation is beneficial. The data from animals caught in the exclusion zone does seem to indicate that this is the case over generations, genes that reduce the risk of cancer have been found to be active in animals caught in the exclusion zone.

    Here is a link to the documentary: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pqwo8