[HN Gopher] New species of tardigrade reveals secrets of radiati...
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New species of tardigrade reveals secrets of radiation-resisting
powers
Author : KasianFranks
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-10-25 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| djaouen wrote:
| Tardigrades would be a good candidate for seeding other planets
| in our galaxy imo
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Maybe they were
| MaanuAir wrote:
| Maybe they are.
| dekhn wrote:
| 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.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The advantage of panspermia is that when cornered, it can
| retreat to more primitive life forms, and even basic life
| molecules. It can't be reasonably unproven, so the onus is
| on the supporters to prove it.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I get what you mean but tardigrades don't photosynthesize, so
| you still have the problem of what they should eat.
| dekhn wrote:
| 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)
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| If we're speaking about terraforming, cyanobacteria
| photosynthesizes, produces oxygen, and is also hardy.
| Forget the tardigrades, we don't want to fight their
| descendants when humanity eventually colonizes.
|
| Bonus: the rise in oxygen might kill any existing native
| life, or make it more like ours.
| im3w1l wrote:
| 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?
| throwup238 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > "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.
| jajko wrote:
| There is usually some energy cost associated to keeping
| resistance unless critically needed. Or limited place on
| genome.
|
| Any organism from virus to human will happily shed over time
| (generations) any resistance we now consider crucial to
| survival, just change its environment enough.
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