Earth Toughest Creatures bearer of a great genetic treasures

Boil them, freeze them, crush them, dry them out or even send them to space it will survive. This tough creature is known as Tardigrades or water bears, a water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals.

Tardigrades survive harsh space environment.

Source: livescience
Tardigrades or water bears, can live just about anywhere. Infact, a space mission TARDIS that was conducted last 2007 show that Tardigrades can survive the extreme dehydration and cosmic radiation. These experiment conduct try to find out how the Tardigrades would fare in the harsh space environment. Tardigrades in space’ (TARDIS) mission last 12 days orbiting Earth with some 3000 Tardigrades aboard on ESA’s orbital Foton-M3 capsule.

Survival in space is often linked to a much wider theory about how life originated here on Earth. “Perhaps the starting point for life was not even here on Earth,” says Demets. “Could life as we know it have started elsewhere, to be carried later for instance on a meteorite and delivered here on Earth? Favourable conditions meant that it could further propagate, develop, grow and live on. Now we have actually found some organisms that can survive under harsh space conditions.”

Tardigrades can withstand extreme temperatures.

Source: Wide Temp

They can survive kin environments as cold as -272.8 degree Celsius (-459 degree Fahrenheit). And can withstand temperatures higher than 148 degree Celsius (300 degree Fahrenheit).

For most animals, life without water is completely impossible. However, Tardigrades can survive extreme desiccation. Researchers found that water bears curl up into a dry shell upon drying. This state is commonly known as tun and it resembles closely to death. Tardigrades can live in tun state for decades. During this state, their metabolic activity gets as low as 0.01% of normal levels.

Tardigrades also have unique anti-dehydration proteins called Tardigrades-Specific Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (TDPs). These proteins exist in jelly-like form in the presence of water. However, during desiccation these proteins turn into a glass-like structure protecting all the dehydration-sentive tissue from harm inside the cells. Infact, in 1995 a dried Tardigrades were brought back to life after 8 years.

Tardigrades can also tolerate ice formation with their cells in extreme cold. They produce chemicals called ice nucleating agents. These agents help them form crystal outside their cells rather than inside. As the result their vital molecules are protected from cold.

Tardigrades withstand extreme pressures.

Source: kazanreporter.com
Tardigrades can bear extreme pressures that would squash most animals flat. Under tun state, water bears can survive a pressure of 600 megapascals.

Tardigrades withstand extreme radiation.

Source: ucl.ac.uk
They can also survive huge amounts of radiation. Thanks to a protein called Dsup, which protect them from damaging X-rays. Researchers were able to transfer that resilience to human cells. Tardigrade-tinged human cells suppressed X-ray induced-damage by about 40%. These findings can one day benefit human undergoing radiation therapy.

Anatomy of the Tardigrades

Source: tardigades galore

Tardigade's genome represents great genetic treasures and is something new to us, we really just at the beginning of exploring it, nobody knew about them. They are truly ancient as research found. Fossils of these creature have been dated back to over 500 million years ago.

Related article:
https://steemit.com/steemstem/@oendertuerk/researchers-believe-only-one-species-will-survive-the-end-of-the-world-tardigrades

References:

www.esa.int
livescience