Posted on 08/31/2021 8:35:25 AM PDT by Red Badger
Tardigrades are undoubtedly weird. Dehydrate them into glass, then fire them out of a gun, and once you rehydrate them you can still have a living creature. Their outsides aren't the only thing that's tough either, with scientists finding last year that they also have special DNA armor proteins.
But if we take a step back from their immense capacity for being beaten up, there are many other mysterious things about them. For starters, how do these tiny creatures walk?
After all, they're one of the only animals with soft little bodies like this that can walk, plus they're one of the smallest animals with legs that we know of.
Tardigrade walking on a soft gel. (Nirody et al., PNAS, 2021)
"One of the coolest – and initially most surprising – things about tardigrades walking to me was how... good they were at it," Rockefeller University mechanical biologist Jasmine Nirody wrote on Twitter.
"They have a regular gait, and it looks remarkably like those of much, much larger animals!"
So, Nirody and colleagues recorded walking tardigrades of the Hypsibius dujardini species to analyze their gait and leg coordination, and we get to enjoy the results.
"We didn't force them to do anything. Sometimes they would be really chill and just want to stroll around the substrate," says Nirody. "Other times, they'd see something they like and run towards it."
The team took tardigrades and walked them across different surfaces, finding that their stepping pattern is very similar to insects – despite the two groups being incredibly different sizes and made of completely different stuff.
The team also recorded the little guys trying to walk on smooth glass (they didn't get very far on the smooth surface), and on gels with two different levels of stiffness, to work out how that changed their walk in the different conditions.
"We find that tardigrades adapt their locomotion to a 'galloping' coordination pattern when walking on softer substrates," the team writes in a new paper.
"This strategy has also been observed in arthropods to move efficiently on flowing or granular substrates."
Why tardigrades walk so much like insects is still an open question. The researchers aren't sure if there could be a potential common ancestor with insects, or whether the walking trait evolved separately in both organisms.
The research has been published in PNAS.
LOL.
Took me a second.
5.56mm
Cute microscopic animals called tardigrades are found almost anywhere there is fresh water. They can also survive extreme conditions—even exposure to the cold vacuum of outer space—and their DNA can withstand a battering by X-ray radiation. Until now, researchers weren’t sure how they did it.
Previous studies in Ramazzottius varieornatus pointed to the effects of damage suppression protein (Dsup), which protects from radiation. Now, using biochemical analysis, researchers at the University of California San Diego have discovered that Dsup binds to chromatin, the protein that wraps up DNA inside cells (eLife 2019, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.47682). Once bound, Dsup forms a protective cloud that shields the critter’s DNA from hydroxyl radicals produced by X-rays. The team found another version of the protective protein in a different tardigrade species.
Although the two proteins share only about 26% of the same amino acid sequence, both protect DNA in the same way. The researchers suspect the protein clouds evolved as a survival mechanism against hydroxyl radicals in tardigrades’ natural habitats. When the environment dries up, tardigrades shift into a dormant state of dehydration, during which Dsup protection should help them survive.
Why tardigrades walk so much like insects is still an open question.
Probably related to the number of legs.
8 vs 6.......................
This is actual science. You perform an experiment, record the results and draw conclusions from same.
The whole thing is kinda neat IMO.
You mean you don’t draw your conclusions first, then do an experiment, then tweak the results to support your conclusion?.....................
In other words, they can't be killed.......great.
This would be then a “Turdigrade” movement... like a reverse bowel movement from Fidel’s bastard “son” via Pierre’s whoring wife (so the rumor mill has said for years, including comparative photgraphs of Fidel and this clown at the same age).
And the dynamic DUMKIRK duo of Hanoi Heels Up Harris and Gepetto JoeBama Xiden demonstrate the IDIOTIC gait of retrograde movement... from so -called “pro”-gressives.
They are all toast— the corruption must not continue.
And don’t leave out Schumer dancing with Colbert— what horrific sad nothing people.
“Of course, a dead horse would be better than Rocky Waterhole’s (probable) spawn.”
Not sure I get the reference.
I always supposed mama Trudope was impregnated by Fidel or Raul Castro during one of her trips. She certainly was enamored enough by them to have offered it up.
Indeed!
/shades of William Blake
;)
Tardigrade, meet propane torch.
Water Bears. You gotta love 💕 em.
Octiped?
Piere Trudeau ➡️
pierre trou d’eau (French)➡️
‘stone water hole’ (per Google Translate)➡️
‘Rocky Waterhole’ (slightly modified)
Pierre may well have spawned the current Prime Mistake of Kanadahar (Canada)
Ahhh
Thank you
I had never heard of these .... wondered where they could be found ....
How to Find Tardigrades (Water Bears) in Your Own Backyard
https://microcosmos.foldscope.com/?p=17901
Insects are all 6-legged. Only arachnids (NOT an insect) are 8-legged.
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