Tardigrades– the micro-animals whose electron micrographs (like the one above) have done the rounds

Tardigrades– the micro-animals whose electron micrographs (like the one above) have done the rounds on social media for its adorable, bear-like appearance – is a famously hardly organism and is the first animal known to survive in space. Be it extreme heat, heavy radiation, high pressures and even desiccation, the “water bear” can shrug it off. From The New York Times:They can remain like that in a dry state for years, even decades, and when you put them back in water, they revive within hours,” said Thomas Boothby, a postdoctoral researcher from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They are running around again, they are eating, they are reproducing like nothing happened.”To determine what allowed tardigrades to survive this kind of extreme dryness, Dr. Boothby and his colleagues designed a test in which the microscopic animals were put into a humidity chamber and slowly dried out as in an evaporating pond– the tardigrade’s native habitat. They discovered that the tardigrades have special genes that create glass-like proteins that can preserve their cells during desiccation. “The glass is coating the molecules inside of the tardigrade cells, keeping them intact,” said Dr. Boothby said. This slows down the tardigrade’s metabolism, allowing it to remain in a suspended state until it is rehydrated. When they add water, the proteins melt into the liquid, and the molecules within the tardigrade are free to carry out their functions again.The tardigrade continues to surprise scientists and this recent discovery raises the question of whether any other animals use the same unique mechanism of protecting against desiccation. To learn more about this research into Tarigrades, read The New York Times’ article “How a Water Bear Survives, Even When It’s Dry.” -- source link

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