Iron Ladies – How desiccated asexual rotifer species deal with high dose Feirradiation?

Bdelloid rotifers are one of the smallest animals on earth. Living all over the world, mostly in semiterrestrial environments, they appear to be extremely stress tolerant. Their desiccation tolerance at any stage of their life cycle is known to confer tolerance to a variety of stresses including high doses of radiation and freezing. Like bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans, bdelloid rotifers appear to survive such extreme conditions because of efficient antioxidants and DNA repair mechanisms. In addition, they constitute a major scandal in evolutionary biology due to the putative absence of sexual reproduction for at least 60 million years.