Indestructible life: Water bears
Indestructible life
Water bears
Preservation of life and its protection is a very difficult task. Previous experiences show us how much effort it requires for any living form to be kept alive and well in nature. Our activity makes it even harder. But still, we should keep our hopes high and do as much as we can. This little guy certainly does.
It is a water bear from the group of tardigrades. He is considered to be almost indestructible!
Living close to death, it seems like he is always a winner. His natural environment is a volcano, so he can survive for 30 years without any food, water and even can endure the vacuum of the space. After careful observation of living functions and abilities to live trough different conditions, scientists concluded that water bears could survive asteroid impact. The article is published in National geographic and many readers were amazed to finally hear about one living form with such great capacities.
Can we learn something from tardigrades? How could they adapt to such a great variety of conditions? It is assumed that tardigrades were present on our planet for many centuries and their major advantage was a small “body” next to their unknown “superpowers” for surviving. From the perspective of Molecular biology and biochemistry, tardigrades own a complex set of enzymes and have specific metabolism which can “shutdown” for some time and preserve energy. Still, this amount of time, almost 30 years, without food and any metabolic activity is amazing and still unknown. The ability to preserve energy and sleepover was the main reason to call them bears. Their DNA is containing dsup or damage suppressor genes which help them to survive and adapt to different conditions. Their DNA is 75-800 megabase pairs long, with a regeneration time of about two weeks; they are easy to culture and cryopreserve. Adaptation shows in loss of gene pathways, due stress. Dsup gene was applied to cultivated human cells and data present suppressed X-ray damage for about 40%.
Tardigrades are potential experimental animals for out-space research since they could survive high and low pressure, extreme conditions. In their natural environment, they feed on mosses and lichens and small invertebrates. Fully grown water bears reach a size of about a half-centimeter. In one liter of fresh water in nature, when surrounded by a positive environment, up to 25 000 of these amazing animals can be collected. Nonreducing sugar trehalose is protecting cell membranes and it is taught to be the reason why they are so durable. Starting from the year 2007 till 2019. several attempts proved that tardigrades can survive after exposure to outer space.
These small, amazing creatures are highly adaptable to different stress levels. They are usually first to make one inhabitable place liveable and attractive to other animals.
