The worms, which were buried approximately 130 feet in the permafrost, were revived simply by putting them in water, according to a news release from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany....
The creatures, which have a life span measured in days, died after reproducing several generations in the lab, researchers said.... The roughly millimeter-long worms were able to resist extreme low temperatures by entering a dormant state called cryptobiosis.... Researchers identified key genes in the nematode that allow it to achieve the cryptobiotic state....
If only they could engineer those key genes for us, the humans, then perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while.
Posts
66 comments:
How's the cure for MD coming along? Cancer? Type 1 diabetes?
The fact that the worms died shortly after reproducing may have something to do with the restarting after an apparent... let's say untimely stopping before achieving a most important biological goal.
Darkhorse clip: Does a particular feature of organisms be presumed to be a product of adaptive evolution or not?
Biologist discusses evolutionary reason for... whatever we happen to notice and develop biological why questions about. (You have to watch the video to get the connection to this post)
Are these the new Sea Monkeys?
46,000 years in the icebox! Those nematodes have got a lot of catching up to do. Wait'll they hear about global warming.
The major take-home message or summary of this discovery I take is 'we mess with our reproduction procesases at our peril'.
I think it would depend on what the cause of death was to begin w/?
Frogs and toads can do that around here in winter -- provided they chill down slowly enough to make the adjustment. Their livers gradually flood the body with so much glucose that it lowers the freezing point of the critters' fluids that they can be well below freezing and NOT have any damaging ice crystals form. The basic biochemical reactions, to say nothing of cardio-pulmonary functions, pause until the things thaw out and warm up in spring.
Here in Kansas we can get mid-winter thaw which breaks dormancy for amphibians and fruit trees alike. Then it turns cold again, killing the frogs and toads which "wake up" too early. Our Hylas tend to be the first to thaw out successfully and their mating calls in late February are a true joy of breaking spring.
Trivia note -- frogs lay their eggs in big blobs, whilst toad eggs come out like long strings of pearls.
I am about the same vintage as our host. I have no desire to live forever. I am content with my place in the universe. (as minuscule, as that place is). I guess living this long has proven to me that nature requires an expiration date. (even that revived nematode understood)
The dead might object.
WELL! if it works for something as complicated as a millimetter long worm..
it MUST be true, for ALL forms a life; that's Obvious!
You first.
Thw Twilight Zone episode "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" featured a con man in the frontier west who claimed to be a "ressurector". He tells the townspeople he visits that he will raise up their dead in the local cemetary in a ceremony that very evening.
The ceremony is convincing and people return to town to await the ressurections that are promised by dawn.
But one by one, they approach the ressurector and explain their happiness is not complete. The saloon keeper has mxed feelings about his late partner who drank up all the profits. A mild mannered gent is not looking forward to the return of his abusive wife. One by one, they offer the ressurector some money to undo the effects and return things as they were.
The ressurector leaves town just before dawn and bids a cheerful goodbye to the deceased. As he departs, the dirt begins to stir and we hear a chorus of revived voices. "I need a drink" says the former saloonkeeper.
Uncle Fred, where did you leave the car keys?
WELL! if it works for something as complicated as a millimetter long worm..
This to me sounds a lot like cold fusion, its a theory. But translating nematode, to mammal is a stretch
But again, I dont see a practical application.
Uncle Fred, what was your Facebook password?
Every zombie apocalypse movie is now a documentary.
I do recall reading a scifi book about the development of 'S-Space' where metabolism slowed so much that people appeared 'dead', but were just operating is very slow motion. Wish I knew what it was called, I'd like to read that, again.
perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while
Suppose, all of a sudden, you could do that. Who would you dig up, drag home and throw in your bathtub?
Would it be somebody you loved or hated?
Would you be looking for them to reproduce before they died again?
"...then perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while."
It's a regular feature in our house.
Comment moderation on today?
Man dies of a sudden heart attack while his wife is nagging him to take out the garbage.
The wife says, "Oh no you don't", dumps a bucket of water on the son of a bitch and makes him finish taking out the trash.
I am more struck by the fact they were found in permafrost. So does this tell us that at one time it was warm in that area? Hmmm…
The cessation and restarting of biological functions in the worms requires both proper storage under freezing temperature and specialized genetics for startup upon rewarming. It isn't amazing the worms can freeze, it is amazing that they can do so without suffering irreversible damage, and then "know" to start from idle again.
So the proper human corollary isn't zombies rising from graves, it is revivification of all those cryo-stored corpses and heads.
Futurama used cryostorage as the basis of its protagonist's appearance 1000 years in the future, for example.
Chaos in comment sections as people repeatedly freeze themselves out and reappear a century later.
Resurrect the dead? What could go wrong? Seriously, haven't these people read "Pet Sematary? or "The Monkey's Paw?"
have any of you ice fished?
You hook your fish, pull him out of the water, and toss him on the ice..
end of the day, you gather up your frozen fish, take them home and start cleaning them..
Pretty soon, several of them are flopping around on the table.
Just 'cause you can do it to SOME fish, or SOME worms; don't mean nothing 'bout doing it to people.
In Siberia, the workers would occasionally find a frozen mammoth while digging for the railroad. They would slice up the meat and roast it and eat it. None of this is new
"The worms, which were buried approximately 130 feet in the permafrost, were revived simply by putting them in water, according to a news release from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany and head researcher, Dr Victor von Frankenstein...."
FIFY
"...then perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while
Sea Monkeys…and those frogs what live in the desert dirt until the Okavango floods arrive…
Bill R said...
"The Twilight Zone episode 'Mr. Garrity and the Graves' featured a con man in the frontier west who claimed to be a 'resurector'. He tells the townspeople he visits that he will raise up their dead in the local cemetery... But one by one, they approach the resurector and explain their happiness is not complete."
Sounds a bit like the Resurrection Stone in Harry Potter.
According to legend: "Cadmus Peverell used it to bring back a girl he had loved. She suffered greatly from being forced back among the world of the living. Realizing the limitations of the Stone, Cadmus killed himself out of grief so that he could truly be with her."
There are frogs and turtles that have adapted to life in the far north where freezing conditions prevail through most of the year. These creatures can be enclosed in solid ice and yet remain alive in stasis for many months. There are also antarctic fish that live year-round in supercooled water.
Freezing destroys animal cells by crystalizing the water component of cytoplasm, the jelly-like material that suspends the cellular organelles in a more or less fixed position within the cell membrane. When the water content freezes the resultant crystals explode the outer membrane. Most animal cells are slightly salty, consequently, their water content freezes slightly cooler than Oº Centigrade, but that only delays the fatal disruption. Plants cells use a complex starch called cellulose to form a much more rigid outer membrane sometimes called a cell wall, which gives plants greater resistance to ice crystal disruption, but generally only by a degree or two cooler.
Animals that can survive freezing use antifreeze proteins to prevent crystal formation at sub-freezing temperatures. Some of these bio-antifreezes derived from the livers of artic sharks have been used experimentally in human food products such as ice cream. Could we implant the genes for antifreeze proteins into the human genome? Probably, but imagine a world populated by thawed out Joe Bidens. Isn't one bad enough?
The problem with frozen mammoth meat is the extraordinarily rapid decomposition of the flesh once it thaws. Native Siberians who routinely eat meat and fish that have been frozen to more than -30º C can tolerate the rotting flesh, but most of us would suffer diarrhea and colitis after eating a mammoth steak.
Sounds a lot like seances held to contact the “spirits” dead family members that was a fad in the late 1800s. Madame Blavatsky made a lot of evil people from her spiritism back then. Trouble with it was it worked enough to convert many fools to her witchcraft religion.
Birdseye brand worms. Don’t tell Bill Gates or we peasants will have a new diet.
I read somewhere, and believed it without thinking, that there was a 10,000 year limit on suspended animation before the radiation from the potassium in our bodies has time to cook us, cell by cell. Of course, there is probably no way to know how healthy and fit and normal the worms were.
Nobody would ever die in the rain. They'd just keep crawling, pathetically dragging themselves through the mud, waiting for the sun to come out. Alone.
Forget AI. I just saw Walt Disney and Ted Williams sharing a latte at Starbucks.
Sci-fi stories used to imagine people planning on being frozen for 100 years while their money accrued interest in banks. Then they were to be defrosted and they would own everything due to the way interest piles up. But we know that the money would have been invested bitcoin and lost. But now suppose we were suspended somehow for 46,000 years; then revived by a more advanced life form that had taken over in the meantime; then urged into a reproductive frenzy; and our descendants then exhibited as a new species. This is what happened to these nematodes. So no thanks on this model of long life.
But while reading around I discovered that yeast is a life form in a cryptobiotic state and is revived by casting water on it (let the yeast rise.) This revival results in bread and beer which are revivifying when cast upon ourselves. So Amstel (but not Bud Light) is as far as I'll go with cryptobiotic resurrection.
It's pronounced FRONKENSTEEN.
The gate is back . . . That period of prompt unfettered posting was a refreshing change. I was as surprised as those worms must have been.
Shorter NYT: it’s possible to survive without a phone.
Gonna be a looooong second term for Biden.
The first beneficiaries of life extension are likely to be the wealthy and powerful. I wonder what sort of reception they will receive from generations born centuries after them.
Of course, those worms (and My bluegills) were PERFECTLY Healthy when they were frozen.
They were NOT dying of old age..
They were NOT dying of cancer...
They were NOT dying of injuries.
They were NOT dying.............
And when they were revived... They 'lived' (well, flopped around) for 5 minutes.
So, it's NOT like you're digging up your beloved mother, and bringing her back to health..
It's You are KILLING your perfectly healthy mother, and THEN bringing her back to 'life'.. For 5 minutes.
Meade? Our Professor is pretty healthy.. Why don't you try it on her?
let us know if the 5 minutes with her (that you would have had Anyway) Was worth murdering her for?
There seems to be a misconception here - this is not resurrecting a dead creature to life, it is suspending the life functions through a cryogenic process and reviving them at a later time. Think of it as hitting a 'pause' button on life program; there will still be an eventual 'end' to the program from which there is no revival.
As the line from Oppenheimer goes, “Theory can only take you so far.” I’ll not be volunteering for this study if and when it progresses to human trials.
Isn't the old cliche about death and burial that our fate is "to be eaten by worms"?
Not to be confused with the Diet of Worms (1521), a mere 502 years ago.
And what organisms (virus, bacterial?) might be present 46,000 years ago but are unknown today?
"...then perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while."
Not if we keep embalming and cremating them.
There are size constraints as well. You have to hydrate the corpse fairly quickly and uniformly.
" I guess living this long has proven to me that nature requires an expiration date."
The best by date is the one that really matters.
"WELL! if it works for something as complicated as a millimetter long worm..
it MUST be true, for ALL forms a life; that's Obvious!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WamF64GFPzg&t=284s
We had 3goldfish given to us from a classroom on the last day of school. They live in a large water tank for our cows, during the Summer- in a bucket come Wintertime. We lost our 1st because they stayed in the tub and it froze- two thawed out. The 2nd got sloshed out by a heifer that probably was pushed somewhat into the tub(thank the Good Lord she didn’t drown). My husband saw it on the ground and figured it too late to save. Me- you ask? I peeled it off the tar and spent quite a while holding it upright- gliding it through the water to get its gills moving.
It live over a day and then sunk like a stone.
“In everything there is a season- a time to be born, a time to die…”
If you call a human embryo a human being we already do this routinely with humans; in in vitro fertilization they can be frozen for many years before revivification.
Although this just hit the news with the release of the associated research paper, they dug these up in 2018 and they immediately started reproducing asexually. Fact!
It's already too late.
Human embryos are frozen and survive. They are at the blastocyst stage, which is less than 300 cells in an envelope membrane. Larger life forms probably cannot be frozen and survive, at least for long periods.
It's an interesting story, but hard to see it being applied to large mammals anytime in the foreseeable future. As an avid reader of science fiction as a boy, my first thought when I saw this was of "suspended animation", or freezing astronauts going on interstellar voyages.
"If only they could engineer those key genes for us, the humans, then perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while."
Part one is restarting the machine. Part two will require that the controller (brain) still works and the programs and data (memories) are intact.
Moisten our dead---brings back to mind an old basic trainging joke. Hardnosed drill sergeant tells a traine, "I'd bet you would pee on my grave." Trainee replies, "No sarge when I get out of this man's Army, I'll never stand in line again."
Which is why you will never see a "revived" drill sergeant.
There is away to accomplish this already for humans: it’s called Resurrection. The New Testament has quite a bit to say about it.
And then restart it
Sure, you go first!
A more useful genetic trait to introduce in people would be the enzyme cellulase which (in bacteria) digests the common structural constituent in plants cellulose (which is actually a chain of glucose molecules). With it people could (if need be) digest and gain sustenance from grass – or even wood chips.
No animal possesses this enzyme; even creatures which customarily eat (e.g.) grass or wood – such as cattle and termites – do so by possessing (having evolved) stomachs which culture the necessary bacteria, which actually do the job. Yet all it takes for a person (or cow or other animal) to directly digest cellulose-laden foodstuffs is addition of a simple enzyme to their stomachs' repertoire.
stlcdr: Is the book you’re looking for
Between the Strokes of Night by Charles Sheffield?
Don't give Biden any ideas...
farmgirl said...
We had 3goldfish given to us from a classroom on the last day of school.
We lost our 1st because they stayed in the tub and it froze-
The 2nd got sloshed out by a heifer.. live over a day and then sunk like a stone.
please don't leave us hanging!! what happened to the 3rd one??????
OMG!! please tell us (Me!) that the 3rd one is still happily living in the cow's water trough!
Lie, if you HAVE TO
If only they could engineer those key genes for us, the humans, then perhaps one day we could moisten our dead and bring them back to life for a little while.
For a more likely use of this technology go watch the movie “Passengers.”
"Thanks for nothing. I was just beating up a carp."
Why all the worm news lately?
When the shores of Tampa Bay froze some years back, many fish froze and got stuck in the mangroves when the tide went out and the air was still in the 20s. It was eerie.
Then they thawed and swam in circles before they died. Freezing destroyed their ability to navigate. Larger predators went on feeding frenzies just off our dock. It was a crappy week to be a fish.
Post a Comment