Intergeo Consulting

Because of its extraordinary radiation-resistance, Deinococcus radiodurans is sometimes used to clean up nuclear waste, a process called bioremediation.  Conan, of course, has no problem with living in a place deadly to pretty much all other life; on the contrary, he loves it.   Until recently there was one problem with this process: D. radiodurans couldn't actually destroy these materials.  But scientists discovered that when combined with a particular gene from E. coli, the bacterium can consume heavy metals and toxic waste.    In addition, the strain of D. radiodurans combined woth E. coli is an indication of Conan's remarkable genetic flexibility (or genome plasticity): the bacterium can adopt large fragments of foreign DNA, an enormous advantage in cleaning up complex mixtures of waste, including materials such as mercury and toluene.  However, Conan's great potential as a remedy for man-made waste deposits has yet to be fully tapped or understood.