In a German laboratory, scientists recently witnessed something that seems like a plotline from the “Jurassic Park” franchise: a 46,000-year-old worm, reanimated.
Soon after, researchers were able to get the roundworm to replicate.
“It’s unlike us… [we] have two copies of our genome, one from mom and one from dad. It has three. And so, it produces asexually like, clonally,” said Gregory Copenhaver, director of the Institute for Convergent Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “That was actually a good thing for the scientists because they only had one of them. If they had needed to have a male and a female to mate, they probably wouldn’t have been able to do their project.”
Copenhaver joined KNX Radio in Los Angeles to discuss the research. He explained that the scientists were able to conduct a genome project on the roundworms after the frozen specimen reproduced.
“Preliminary analysis indicates that these nematodes belong to the genera Panagrolaimus and Plectus,” said their research, published Thursday in the PLOS GENETICS journal.
During the late Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), the worm went into “cryptobiosis,” a state of suspended metabolism triggered by extreme environmental conditions. C. elegans is another organism that can enter cryptobiosis due to what scientists described as a “combination of genetic and biochemical pathways.”
Researchers in Russia found the ancient worm in a rodent burrow buried deep in Siberian permafrost.
“The burrow (P-1320), in which Panagrolaimus nematodes were found has been taken from the frozen outcrop wall at a depth of about 40 meters below the surface and about 11 meters above river water level in undisturbed and never thawed late Pleistocene permafrost deposits,” said the study. “The fossil burrow left by arctic gophers of the genus Citellus consists of an entrance tunnel and large nesting chamber.”
Once scientists brought the specimen to the lab, it came back to life. Copenhaver said it is “super unusual” for an organism this old to reanimate.
“The field of biology that this work is done in is called cryptobiology, which means secret lives, essentially,” he said. “And these are organisms that have figured out ways to survive in really challenging environments, and in this case, surviving for a very long period while being frozen. And the way that it looks like it did that is it has a set of genes that lets it produce this sugar called trehalose, which when at high concentrations in its cells is present, allows it to survive freezing temperatures.”
While C. elegans is often frozen, an organism that “spans glacial ages and survives that long is really unusual,” Copenhaver added.
KNX Radio asked him if this research could ever be applied to humans.
“I mean, people do look at this kind of biology and try to project potential uses out of it,” he said. However, Copenhaver also said he won’t be freezing himself anytime soon: “I think there are a lot of dots to connect between this discovery of this one worm and advanced technologies like that.”
According to the study, the findings are important to help further our understanding of evolutionary processes.
“Generation times could be stretched from days to millennia, and long-term survival of individuals of species can lead to the refoundation of otherwise extinct lineages,” it said.
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