Computer Model Exposes Tardigrade Superpower
Tardigrades are well-known for their resilience, and now a computer model suggests a potential mechanism underlying their DNA protection skills
Tardi-what?
Tardigrades, aka water bears or moss piglets, are a group of microscopic animals (about 0.5mm long as adults). The roughly 1,300 known species can be found anywhere, from the freezing cold of the Antarctic to the humid heat of the tropical rainforest.
Their wide-ranging distribution is not their main claim to fame, though. The resilience that enables this distribution is. Tardigrades are among the hardiest animals we know.
They’ve been recovered alive from inside layers of ice as well as the inside of hot springs. They laugh at radiation doses that are several thousand times the lethal dose for us feeble humans. They float happily in a vacuum (up to ten days in outer space), but some species are equally comfortable under a pressure several times higher than that measured at the bottom of the Mariana trench.
They may be small, but they’re superheroes nonetheless. In fact, it’s been proposed that in the event of a (limited) astrophysical apocalypse, earth might not be entirely sterile. There will probably be some…
