After being frozen for more than three decades, a microscopic organism known as a tardigrade has been revived by researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research and has successfully reproduced, according to research published in the journal Cryobiology.
Tardigrades, also known as water bears because of their chunky bodies and claws, are among the toughest creatures on Earth, BBC News and the Wall Street Journal explained. They can survive extreme heat, cold, pressure, and radiation because of a biological mechanism called cryptobiosis, which enables them to slow down metabolic activity for extended periods of time.
In fact, in 2007 tardigrades became the first creatures to survive exposure to space when officials at the European Space Agency launched 3,000 of them into orbit for 12 days as part of their Foton-M3 mission. The creatures involved in the recent NIPR study were found along with moss plants collected near Showa Station in Antarctica in November 1983, published reports indicate.
The samples were kept frozen at temperatures of negative 20 degrees Celsius (negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit) and taken to Japan. Two tardigrades and one egg were found in the moss, researchers said. One of the creatures and the egg were successfully thawed in May 2014, and the tardigrade was able to begin moving and consuming food after approximately two weeks.
Successful reproduction after the freeze
The revival of the tardigrades shattered the previous record for the longest time that one of the creatures was successfully revived from cryptobiosis, the NIPR scientists explained. Previously, the longest a water bear had spent in this state before being resuscitated was nine years.
Furthermore, the revived tardigrade was able to lay a total of 19 eggs, 14 of which hatched, the Wall Street Journal and BBC News reported. While the researchers said that the first eggs took a bit longer than later ones to hatch, they found no anomalies amongst the newborn water bears.
The institute is hoping to learn exactly how tardigrades can survive such extreme conditions for such a long period of time. They hope to discover the biological mechanisms responsible for the hardy nature of the features by examining the DNA of these cryptobiotic creatures.
“The long recovery times of the revived tardigrades observed is suggestive of the requirement for repair of damage accrued over 30 years of cryptobiosis,” lead author Megumu Tsujimoto and her colleagues wrote. “Further more detailed studies will improve understanding of mechanisms and conditions underlying the long-term survival of cryptobiotic organisms.”
However, as amazing as it is that the water bear was able to be revived after three decades, it is not the longest that a frozen creature has gone before being successfully revived, Gizmodo noted. That honor belongs with “a plant-parasitic nematode worm, Tylenchus polyhypnus, that survived after nearly 39 years in a frozen state.”
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Image credit: Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research
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