
42000 years old nematodes found alive
Curiosity is basic to human nature. Which is what makes us humans go in search of what lies there beyond and beneath our understanding. All the inventions and discoveries are a plain result of human curiosity. And it has, time and again, questioned the basic human assumptions, pushed the boundaries of knowledge and made the civilizations move ahead by leaps and bounds, adding fuel to curious explorers and scientists to go further.
In one such expedition, a group of Russian scientists have successfully revived two species of tiny worms that they discovered suspended in an icy chunk of Siberia frozen for up to 42,000 years! Alive and awake after a long long sleep!
During one of their projects about life and evolution, Russian biologists dug up more than 300 samples of frozen soil of different ages and locations throughout the frigid zones of the Arctic. The scientists recovered permafrost (permanently frozen ground) samples from the remote Yakutia region in Siberia. One of the samples was 100 feet deep and estimated to have frozen 32,000 years ago. Another sample, which was taken from the Kolyma River region of Siberia, was just over 11 feet deep and froze 42,000 years ago.
A form of roundworms, called the nematodes, were found 100 feet underground in what had once been a ground squirrel burrow. They lie frozen there for over 32,000 years. Others were found in another sample at a depth of around 11.5 feet. Carbon dating was used to determine that sample to be about 42,000 years old.
They were transported in temperature-controlled Petri dishes and taken to a laboratory. The nematodes were separated from the soil, and gently defrosted over the course of several weeks. Then they were placed into Petri dishes with a nutrient medium. Within some time, the researchers saw them alive, moving and eating, setting a record for the time a living-being can survive cryogenic preservation.
It was a startling discovery that they weren’t dead — just cryogenically preserved. Until now, the longest nematodes had been dormant when revived was 39 years!
Nematodes are impressive little worms. They measure less than 1 millimeter across. They are very resilient and adaptive. They have been found living in every type of ecosystem, even almost a mile below the Earth’s surface and some have even adapted to living inside slug intestines.
Reviving ancient organisms is nothing new to the scientific community. Certain types of bacteria, algae and yeasts have been found to remain viable even after being frozen in permafrost for thousands of years. But an organism as complex as the nematode, had never shown to be capable of this.
What is unique about the nematode in this case is its ability to survive freezing. Ordinarily, when cells are frozen, ice crystals form within the cell and puncture the cell membrane. When the cells are defrosted, they are no longer alive as their membranes are full of holes. The nematodes have miraculously survived through this process.
The Russian team noted that their findings could have implications for astrobiology — the search for life outside our planet — as well as cryomedicine and cryobiology, which is the study of how extremely low temperatures affect life.
Learning more about the biochemical mechanisms nematodes use to limit the damage of ice and hold off the ravages of oxidation on DNA over the millennia may help us better cryopreservation technologies. Aside from revealing new limits of endurance, it just might prove useful when it comes to preserving our own tissues.
With this, some of the bright ones of our own species are already curious of a possibility of human immortality!

