Turritopsis nutricula, the invasion of the immortal jellyfish

Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish

We are before an invasion in all rule. Quiet, slow, invisible, but for that reason less nonreal. And it is happening now, in front of our own noses and in all the oceans of the planet. The invader is a small jellyfish, hidrozoo of just half centimeter of length, but with a characteristic that animal makes unique between all the creatures of the kingdom. In fact, of a form that Science not yet has managed to include/understand, the Turritopsis jellyfish nutricula is immortal.

Unlike the other jellyfish (and of the rest of the animal) Turritopsis nutricula does not die after reaching its adult state, but he is able to rejuvenecer, to return to his youthful form and to repeat his vital cycle until reaching one second maturity and one third, and one fourth, and thus to a number of times that is, according to the scientists, potentially infinitely.

Nutricola Turritopsis is able to secure this feat because the way is shortage to modify its cells once these have been different. And to make them back down to phases previous to its specialization. Transdiferenciación is a called phenomenon that can be seen, for example when a damaged organ regenerates its weaves. Nevertheless, for this species of hidromedusa the process is something current in its vital cycle.

In laboratory tests, the one hundred percent of the units of T. nutricula analyzed has matured and returned to youth tens of times, without losing in those changes not one of their characteristics or capacities. The investigators had to reach the conclusion that the organic death is something that in this species, simply, does not happen.

Mystery without solving

The existence of this exceptional creature is known for more than one decade. From the Nineties the species has been put under genetic and biological analyses of all type to try to start to him, without success, the secret of its immortality.

But the alarm voice was not given until the past summer by the bióloga Maria Pia Miglietta, of the Pennsylvania State University, that indeed because of a series of realised genetic analyses to tens of unit of the jellyfish realized which the species, original of the seas of the Caribbean, had practically extended by all the oceans of the world.

What is able to make this jellyfish, affirms the investigator, is equivalent to a butterfly that could return to become a caterpillar. In its analyses, Miglietta compared the mitocondrial DNA of units of Turritopsis picked up in Florida and Panama with others coming from other places of the world and that had been collected during previous investigations.

And this comparison went when doing when it was with the surprise that determined genetic sequences they were repeated in units obtained from Panama to Japan. In fifteen of them, coming from both countries and of the epañolas and Italian coasts, the sequences were identical. The existence of this landlord implies an extraordinary facility of movement. And the investigators think that facility, just as the one of many invading marine species, comes from the warehouses and the ballast tanks of the boats that sail by those waters. The one hundred percent of the studied units matured and returned to youth in tens of occasions.

Source: www.abc.es

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An Answer to Turritopsis nutricula, the invasion of the immortal jellyfish

  1. that is not absolutely truth
    that the cycle begins again if but total, she looks for her destruction.

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