Deinococcus radiodurans is a bacterium, an extremophile and one of the most radiation-resistant organisms known. It can survive cold, dehydration, vacuum, and acid, and therefore is known as a polyextremophile. The Guinness Book Of World Records listed it in January 1998 as the world’s most radiation-resistant bacterium or lifeform.
It also has:
- a name that can be literally translated as “radiation-resistant terrible grain/berry” (though I think it looks kinda pretty)
- the ability to survive in outer space for three years
- “Conan the Bacterium” nickname because it’s so tough
- a tendency to form tetrads (i.e. four cells live together)
Featured in 🔧 Entity Explosion〈Toby Hudson〉, since I needed a link about a well-defined subject to test the extension, and now-deleted Reddit post about Conan the Bacterium conveniently showed up in my RSS feed.
Sources#
- 1Universal_Turtle, ‘TIL about “Conan the Bacterium”, an organism that’s been around for about a billion years more than us, can survive almost anything and will likely outlast us all.’, Reddit Post, R/Todayilearned, 6 July 2025, www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1lt4ij6/til_about_conan_the_bacterium_an_organism_thats/. 1
- Wikipedia, ‘Deinococcus radiodurans’, 19 July 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deinococcus_radiodurans&oldid=1301398887.
Note that the post was removed because of its unverifiable, clickbaity title. ↩︎