Wait, I’m still not clear on exactly how these protect against ionizing radiation. Is there some unique structure of these proteins that act as shielding?
[^1]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12808 similar research noted in another comment as well. Note that most likely the novelty of the OP research is using CRISPR instead of the transfection method cited in the paper.
I assume they talk about Dsup (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dsup), an enzyme preventing DNA breaks by stabilization. DNA breaks are caused by radiation and are what causes mutations (increased cancer risk) and in the extreme case cell death.
This abstract talks a bit about tardigrades DNA repair and radiation damage avoidance, and possibilities of gene identification.