by Brett Smith
Tardigrades, the odd microscopic
animals also referred to as water bears, are known for the puppet-like
appearance and capacity to persist despite extreme environments and states.
According to a new report in the journal Cell, water bears' uncanny
survival ability can be attributed to a unique group of proteins, which the
study team called tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins (TDPs).
The study helps explain why tiny
animals are able to withstand harsh radiation, temperatures approaching Absolute
Zero, extreme desiccation, and other bizarre circumstances.
"The big takeaway from our
study is that tardigrades have evolved unique genes that allow them to survive
drying out," study author Thomas Boothby, a postdoctoral fellow at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said in a statement. "In addition, the proteins that these
genes encode can be used to protect other biological material—like bacteria,
yeast, and certain enzymes—from desiccation."
The Tardigrade's Big Secret
For some time, it was thought
that a glucose known as trehelose gave tardigrades the capability to put up
with an extreme lack of water. Trehelose is discovered in a quantity of other
organisms that can make it through extreme dessiccation, including yeast and
some nematode worms.
However, biochemical analyses of
tardigrades have discovered trehelose at low amounts or not at all, and genetic
analyses have not shown a gene for the enzyme necessary to make this sugar.
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