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Science 10 January 2003:
Vol. 299. no. 5604, pp. 254 - 256
DOI: 10.1126/science.1077865
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Reports

Ringlike Structure of the Deinococcus radiodurans Genome: A Key to Radioresistance?

Smadar Levin-Zaidman,1 Joseph Englander,1 Eyal Shimoni,1 Ajay K. Sharma,2 Kenneth W. Minton,3 Abraham Minsky1*

The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans survives ionizing irradiation and other DNA-damaging assaults at doses that are lethal to all other organisms. How D. radiodurans accurately reconstructs its genome from hundreds of radiation-generated fragments in the absence of an intact template is unknown. Here we show that the D. radiodurans genome assumes an unusual toroidal morphology that may contribute to its radioresistance. We propose that, because of restricted diffusion within the tightly packed and laterally ordered DNA toroids, radiation-generated free DNA ends are held together, which may facilitate template-independent yet error-free joining of DNA breaks.

1 Department of Organic Chemistry, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
2 Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology, National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
3 Department of Pathology, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD 20814-4799, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: avi.minsky{at}weizmann.ac.il

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