[throw88888]

Ionized radiation is dangerous to mammals because of the potential DNA damage that we are so bad at repairing.

Plants on the contrary tolerate much more damage. To the point that we develop new species by bombarding seeds with ionized radiation.

[busyant]

> Plants on the contrary tolerate much more damage. To the point that we develop new species by bombarding seeds with ionized radiation.

Years ago, I worked with this microbe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans).

"Deinococcus radiodurans is capable of withstanding an acute dose of 5,000 grays (Gy), or 500,000 rad, of ionizing radiation with almost no loss of viability, and an acute dose of 15,000 Gy with 37% viability.[14][15][16] A dose of 5,000 Gy is estimated to introduce several hundred double-strand breaks (DSBs) into the organism's DNA (~0.005 DSB/Gy/Mbp (haploid genome)). For comparison, a chest X-ray or Apollo mission involves about 1 mGy, 5 Gy can kill a human ...."

Some enterprising researchers must have considered engineering this microbe to produce useful products in space, but I don't travel in these circles anymore.

[selcuka]

I like how latin names for such organisms are (intentionally) so fitting: "radiodurans".

[dhosek]

I read about an effort to do this in the 1950s (IIRC, it was in Pawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit by Andrew Moore, but I could be wrong about that) and as I remember it, most of the radiated seeds were either sterile or produced deformed offspring.

[CapitalistCartr]

Atomic gardens:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening

[realce]

Did they expose the seeds or the plant that produced them?

[fsckboy]

>we develop new species by bombarding seeds with ionized radiation

"yes, no problem, because what could go wrong!? Another slice of care-not cake, pls"

[evilduck]

What's the difference between atomic gardening and regular selective breeding performed under the giant ball emitting ionizing radiation that we have overhead half the day except the rate at which mutations occur? Plants with terrible nonviable mutations might be entirely sterile even if we like them, plants with viable but undesirable mutations we won't propagate into another generation. It seems akin to modern GMO efforts with a shotgun instead of a scalpel, but it did work.

Plants also handle mutations differently, creating burls and cavities and whatnot instead of it taking over the entire existing plant like cancer does in animals. You're unlikely to generate a Plants vs. Zombies scenario here.

[itishappy]

While it sure sounds straight out of some 50s horror movie, I have a feeling the consequences here are pretty insignificant. The mutant tomatoes I've harvested and eaten from my garden have been quite tasty. Any particular fears in mind?

[jajko]

This is what nature keeps doing for billions of years - we have constant background radiation, some stuff from sun which still gets through, and lets not forget about everybody's favorite cosmic rays. The most energetic particle we detected had energy of baseball ball thrown at 100kmh. I'd say this is the main fuel of whole evolution of life on Earth, on top of drastically changing environments.

You can't build 100% radiation-shielded environment, anywhere. Neutrinos just don't care that much about obstacles (and interact very weakly with target, but they still do in small numbers, that's how we detect them).

[pixl97]

Honesty the biggest what could go wrong is things like vegetables will stop producing the useful large fruits we eat if we're trying to grow things for food.

[hammock]

Have we tried the same with animals?

[mjfl]

yeah plants tend to be polyploid which helps with robustness to radiation damage.