Genetic Engineering of Radioresistant Organisms

Genetic engineering is a reality of current medical practice given the focus on rare, but inherited diseases that significantly limit someone’s health. The new technique of CRISPR/CAS-9 gene editing and the previous approaches including gene therapy using vectors, such as viruses or plasmid liposome, have led to realistic approaches in clinical medicine that can limit the deleterious effects of genetic diseases. In basic biology, the discovery of Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacterium that evolved under conditions of high-level radiation exposure, suggests that adaptation to radiation includes amplification of existing genes and potential evolution of new genes that are involved in DNA repair and production of antioxidants to limit reactive oxygen species induced by irradiation. How such approaches can translate from the laboratory to a method by which to facilitate radiation resistance of astronauts in the future will be a controversy that involves not only basic biology, and clinical medicine, but also ethics. Attention to the pleiotropic effects of inserted or edited genes will have implications for future human survival.