Scientist’s Bring Animals Back To Life after Being Frozen for Over 30 Years
Science is amazing. You may have heard about the new technology of cryogenic freezing where in November 2016 a 13 year old British girl who had died of cancer was cryogenically frozen in Detroit. The technology of freezing can even work as it has been proven in the case of Microscopic animals frozen for decades have now been brought back to life.
Tradigrades which are 1mm long microscopic animals were taken from moss samples in Antarctica in 1983 and frozen using a similar technology as reported by a research study published in the Journal Cryobiology.
1 One of the animals even reproduced after being revived
The microscopic animals frozen for over 30 years at the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research are also known as water bears or moss piglets because of the way they look. The 8 legged segmented animals were frozen at temperatures of -4F. Two of the species were thawed in 2014 but one died after 20 days during the course of experiments.
The other survived and even reproduced with another tardigrade whch was hatched from a frozen egg. Subsequently 19 eggs were laid in that process where 14 remarkably survived.
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2 The current study sets the foundation for long term survival
Tardigrades live in water and are found across the world. They are regarded by science as tough animals and have even survived being blasted into space. In the frozen cryptobiotic state, their metabolism shuts down when experiencing low temperatures.
The earliest record for Tardigrades surviving a frozen environment was 6 years. The present study extends the known length of long-term survival in tardigrade species considerably,” said researchers.
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3 Cryogenic freezing may renew life again
According to lead researcher Megumu Tsujimoto, the team will now research the mechanism for long term survival by studying the damage to the DNA of the Tardigrades and repairing it.
Although the microscopic animals frozen for 30 years is a record of sorts, The current record for any living microorganism to survive a frozen state was a nematode worm which survived after being frozen for 39 years in a deep freeze. It was revived and even lived. Such experiments give hope to the fact that it may extend to humans like the teenager who still remains frozen at -196C in a cryogenic facility in Detroit which stores 150 bodies.
She may even live again after 200 years when they find a cure for her disease.
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