Bdelloid rotifers are tiny, but exceptional animals in two respects: they are asexual, evolving without males since more than 60 million years, and they can survive to extreme stress such as irradiation doses equivalent to more than 100 times the dose released by of the bomb of Hiroshima.
In their work recently published in Science Advances, the teams of B. Hallet (UClouvain) and K. Van Doninck (ULB) demonstrate that these two aptitudes result from an exceptional capacity at repairing DNA to rebuild damaged chromosomes and transmit a corrected copy of the genome to the progeny.
This article was the subject of a press release by RTBF.