In humanity’s infinite quest for immortality, we’ve explored spiritual ideas, scientific developments, and legendary options just like the fountain of youth.
But remarkably, the key to dishonest demise could have been drifting in our oceans all alongside, embodied in a tiny, translucent jellyfish barely the dimensions of your little fingernail.
A rare life cycle
The hydrozoan Turritopsis dohrnii, generally often known as the immortal jellyfish, possesses a organic functionality that defies our understanding of pure life cycles. As Miranda Lowe, a museum curator at Pure Historical past Museum explains, most jellyfish comply with a predictable path. She says, “They’ve eggs and sperm and these get launched to be fertilised, after which from that you just get a free-swimming larval type. The larva will transfer about within the present till it finds a tough floor to determine itself. It is going to then begin to mature and develop. Larvae mature into polyps, which can then bud off and mature into younger jellyfish.”
What most of us recognise as a jellyfish is definitely the ultimate stage of their life cycle, often known as the medusa stage. In response to BBC Earth, “Once we consider a jellyfish, what most of us image is the ‘Medusa stage’, the second stage of jellyfish life. They spend this a part of their lives as opaque drifting balloons with trailing tentacles.”
The death-defying transformation
What makes T. dohrnii really outstanding is what occurs when these tiny creatures face demise. As BBC Earth mentions in its article, “If the beginning of jellyfish life wasn’t extraordinary sufficient, its demise is the place issues get actually thrilling.”
When careworn by hunger, bodily injury, or different environmental threats, as an alternative of dying, the immortal jellyfish undergoes an astonishing transformation. The Pure Historical past Museum article describes this course of intimately. It explains, “When the medusa of this species is bodily broken or experiences stresses comparable to hunger, as an alternative of dying it shrinks in on itself, reabsorbing its tentacles and dropping the power to swim. It then settles on the seafloor as a blob-like cyst.”
Inside simply 24-36 hours, this blob transforms right into a polyp — an earlier life stage — primarily reversing its growth. BBC Earth describes this phenomenon vividly, “When the medusa of the immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) dies, it sinks to the ocean flooring and begins to decay. Amazingly, its cells then reaggregate, not into a brand new medusa, however into polyps, and from these polyps emerge new jellyfish. The jellyfish has skipped to an earlier life stage to start once more.”
This might be similar to a butterfly, as an alternative of dying, reworking again right into a caterpillar after which metamorphosing into an grownup butterfly as soon as once more.
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Transdifferentiation: The science behind immortality
The organic mechanism behind this outstanding transformation known as transdifferentiation — an especially uncommon mobile course of. The Pure Historical past Museum article explains that this course of “reprogrammes the medusa’s specialised cells to develop into specialised polyp cells, permitting the jellyfish to regrow themselves in a wholly totally different physique plan to the free-swimming jellyfish that they had not too long ago been.”
What makes this significantly extraordinary is that medusa cells and polyp cells serve totally different capabilities and create totally different buildings. But by some means, T. dohrnii can convert one specialised cell kind into one other utterly totally different kind — a organic feat that has captured the creativeness of scientists worldwide.
Dr Lisa-ann Gershwin, a jellyfish researcher quoted by BBC Earth, emphasises the importance of this discovery, noting, “This was an actual thoughts blower for all of us. It’s one of the vital wonderful discoveries of our time.”