New species of tardigrade reveals secrets of radiation-resisting powers
9 comments
·October 25, 2024im3w1l
throwup238
It’s a form of evolutionary cross-tolerance. The mechanisms that tardigrades evolved to handle the hydration/dehydration cycle in moss just happen to be very effective at protecting them from radiation and a bunch of other environments.
That’s not a very satisfying answer until you dig into the biology that makes it happen. The mechanisms that protect cells from environmental stress are useful for many different kinds of stressors.
begueradj
> "Like it would make sense to have resistance to one or two things, but all those things? "
It makes sens, and all organisms and creatures would be more than happy to evolve to where they have resistance to everything.
That's a way to remain healthy, strong and spread own genes as much as possible for a long time.
djaouen
Tardigrades would be a good candidate for seeding other planets in our galaxy imo
im3w1l
I get what you mean but tardigrades don't photosynthesize, so you still have the problem of what they should eat.
dekhn
You send them with algae and photosynthetic bacteria, which are also pretty robust. Algae is (are?)a mazing. I would not at all be surprised if you sent tardigrades to enough remote planets, that they would find some local equivalent of algae that is mostly digestable. And photosynthetic bacteria were some of the earliest forms of life on earth, likely surviving adverse conditions (I think it's still an open question whether the earliest organisms with metabolism used geochemical energy or photosynthetic energy)
deafpolygon
Maybe they were
dekhn
it's unlikely, as they showed up evolutionarily after preceding organisms and were wholly consistent with evolution of preceding organisms. They are remarkably similar to other organisms, like isopods.
MaanuAir
Maybe they are.
What confuses me about tardigrades is how they are resistant to so many things. Like it would make sense to have resistance to one or two things, but all those things? Why is that even needed? Do they keep ending up in bad situations?