Restoring youth is one of the oldest dreams of mankind. It seems that one of the sea creatures is able to do this, reminiscent of «The Curious Case of Benjamin Button».
Usually, animals and humans are born, age, and die, but some species can break out of the traditional life cycle, reverting to younger versions of themselves. A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has discovered a new creature with a superpower. The rib-melting (crested) Mnemiopsis leidyi demonstrated to scientists an extraordinary «time travel».
«This work challenges our understanding of early animal and body development, opening up new avenues for studying plasticity and life-cycle rejuvenation. The fact that we have found a new species that uses a special «time-traveling machine» raises fascinating questions about how widespread this ability is across the animal tree of life»,” writes Joan J. Soto-Angel, a doctoral student at the University of Bergen and co-author of the study.
The study is based on an accidental empirical discovery. Joan J. Soto-Angel began the study after a comb larva suddenly appeared in place of an adult animal in his laboratory aquarium. However, as it turned out, it was the same creature. The scientists tried to recreate a scenario that could trigger the reverse development and found that an adult animal can actually revert to the larval stage when it is under severe stress.
«Watching them slowly transform into a typical larva, as if going back in time, was fascinating. Not only did they change their morphological features over the course of several weeks, but they also had a completely different feeding behavior typical of a» larva,” Soto-Angel explained.
Ribfish are ancient animals. Some studies show that they are probably among the first animals to ever exist. So reverse evolution may be an ancestral ability.
«This is a very exciting time for us. This exciting finding will open the door to many important discoveries. It will be interesting to uncover the molecular mechanism that drives reverse development and what happens to the animal’s nervous network during this process,» writes Paul Burkhardt, a researcher at the University of Bergen who also co-authored the study.
Researchers suggest that life-cycle plasticity, the ability of an organism to change aspects of its biology when it experiences certain environmental stimuli, may be more widespread than previously thought. Human successes in rejuvenation have been modest, if any, but animal research may someday improve this outcome.
Source: Gizmodo