![]() ![]() Some tardigrades can form bubbly cysts around their bodies. In hot conditions, they release heat-shock proteins, which prevent other proteins from warping. Tardigrades have different adaptations for a wide variety of environmental threats. Instead, they moseyed around on a plate of agar gel like nothing had happened. When the tardigrades unfroze in May 2014, they did not seek vengeance upon humanity for their imprisonment. ![]() ![]() In 1983, a team of Japanese scientists on a journey through Antarctica collected some tardigrades and put them in a deep freeze for thirty years. There have even been reports of tuns surviving more than 100 years before rehydrating. (Around 43,00 PSI, “most bacteria and multicellular organisms die,” Nature reported.)Īs a tun, the tardigrade reduces its metabolism by 99.99 percent as it waits for a more suitable environment. Research has also shown the tuns can survive pressures up to 87,022.6 pounds per square inch - six times what you’d find in the deepest part of the ocean. Remarkably, a handful of them survived both the radiation and the vacuum, making them the first animals on record to survive complete space exposure. Ten days later, the tardigrades were returned to Earth and rehydrated. In 2007, the European Space Agency launched a satellite carrying (among other things), a payload of tardigrades in tun form, and selectively exposed them to the vacuum of space and cosmic radiation. Boiling water and temperatures near absolute zero (i.e., as cold as cold gets) don’t faze them. In this state of hibernation, the tuns can withstand just about any assault. This process is called vitrification, and scientists have been trying to replicate it for use in protecting other delicate cellular tissues like sperm and eggs. When the trehalose crystalizes, the tardigrade becomes mummified in a glass suit of armor. “Trehalose is viewed as a cocoon that traps the biomolecule inside a glassy matrix, like amber-encasing insects,” explains a 2009 paper in Protein Science. In this tun state, the tardigrades produce glycerol (antifreeze), and also secrete trehalose, a simple sugar with remarkable preservation properties. When removed from water and dried out, tardigrades can transform into a cellular fortress, tucking in their legs and head, forming a compact pill shape called a “tun.” Most microscopic animals need water to survive - otherwise, they can evaporate away if taken out of the water. 2) Tardigrades can transform into tuns - allowing them to survive just about anywhere When you look at them under the microscope, they stare straight back, unfazed by humans. Tardigrades can move their heads independent of their bodies, and some species have eyes. 2016 Cryobiology (photo by Megumu Tsujimoto/NIPR) Hence their nickname, “water bears.” Tsujimoto et al. Tardigrades lumber around in the water, like a bear might when crossing a river. At the end of each leg is a set of stubby little claws. Tardigrades - which grow up to a millimeter in length - swim with four sets of stubby legs that appear much too small for their bodies. “They’re very charismatic,” Bartels says. Tardigrades seem like the type of animal Pixar would feature in a life-affirming yet heart-wrenching children’s movie. 1) First things first: Tardigrades are uncannily cute Via GIPHY Biologists like Bartels have been studying more than 1,000 species of tardigrade worldwide, trying to reverse-engineer their remarkable ability to survive. Their extreme resilience has allowed them to conquer the entire planet.Īnd though biologists have known about tardigrades since the dawn of the microscope, they’re only just beginning to understand how these remarkable organisms are able to survive anywhere. They live on every continent, in every climate, and in every latitude. Pick up a piece of moss, and you’ll find tardigrades. ”There are some ecosystems in the Antarctic called nunataks where the wind blows away snow and ice, exposing outcroppings of rocks, and the only things that live on them are lichens and tardigrades,” says Bartels, an invertebrate zoologist at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. The rush comes, in part, because tardigrades are the most fascinating animals known to science, able to survive in just about every environment imaginable. ”The first paper I wrote describing a new species, there was a maternal-paternal feeling - like I just gave birth to this new thing,” he said in 2016. Paul Bartels gets a rush every time he discovers a new species of tardigrade, the phylum of microscopic animals best known for being both strangely cute and able to survive the vacuum of space. ![]()
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