What if life was cyclical, rather than linear? What if rather than dying, you simply reverted back to being an infant? If you've ever seen the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, then you've seen this first hand. While we all know with current technology this would be impossible, one animal may hold the genetic map to the fountain of youth.
The turritopsis nutricula jelly fish can be found in warm waters. They and travel alone by following the ocean currents. While they may seem harmless, these 4-5mm in diameter jellies pack quite a sting, and are known to send victims to the hospital. See what they look like here. However, their sting isn't what's causing a buzz among the scientific community. The turritopsis nutricula species of jelly fish (also known as the hydrozan), is the only animal known that can revert back to it's polyp state (first stage of life) repeatedly. It develops into a mature adults than reverts back to it's polyp stage, meaning there may be no natural limit to it's life span.
The jellies are able to live forever due to a process called transdifferentiation. This is the same process salamanders use to regrow their tails. This is done by transforming one type of cell into another type of cell. Salamanders however, can only undergo limited transdifferentiation, meaning they can only regenerate specific organs. The hydrozan jelly fish can undergo an unlimited amount of transdifferentiations, meaning they can regenerate their entire bodies over and over again.
The process the jelly fish undergoes involves turning itself into a jelly like blob. This blob then turns into a polyp colony, which is the first life stage of the jelly fish. Within the colony, a sort of asexual reproduction occurs, resulting in hundreds of jelly fish that are an exact genetic copy of the original. This means that a jelly fish found floating off the coast of Cape Cod could have the exact same genetics as a jelly floating near the coast of South Africa.
While researches aren't looking into using this information as the new fountain of youth, they are looking to the jellies as a possible cure for cancer. According to biologist Stefano Piraino like cancer cells "some cells of this jellyfish that were supposed to [die] … are able to switch off some genes and to switch on some other genes, reactivating genetic programs that were used in earlier stages of the life cycle".
While the jellies don't offer the key to the elixir of life, or directions to the fountain of youth, the possibilities are endless. What if someday, instead of dying, humans simply reverted back to their infancy, and made hundred of exact copies of themselves. I don't know about you but one is enough of some people.
P.S- I feel that the Harry Potter background music in this video is very fitting.
I got my information from...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article5594539.ece
I have used the UK Times as sources in several other projects and have often found them to be unbiased, but sometime they fail to address the details of a subject well enough.
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/26/the-world-s-only-immortal-animal.html?pg=3
Unless it's the answeres section, Yahoo is alwaysa a great source for short, straight to the point articles.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090130-immortal-jellyfish-swarm_2.html
National Geographic is one of my all time favorite sources! They are great for any level of reader, and their site includes games and awesome photo slide shows. Their articles go in depth, but don't sound too snobbish.
Of course the first thing I start to consider with these amazing jellyfish is how it could relate to human biology and ultimately result in us figuring out biological "cheats" in life. In all honesty this idea frightens me because I feel like straying from a natural cycle of life will lead to some truly catastrophic repercussions on a larger level. This may just be my close mindedness speaking however.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been interesting to see you go into your opinions on extending human life, but thank you for the interesting article all the same.
ReplyDelete"Immortality is overrated." Those are the words I live by. I'm not even at my first twenty years in this life, living another hundred scares me in a way. What exactly am I going to do with my life between now and then?
With immortality, people would not see the need to savor the good things in life. There would be no hurry for anything, it'd just be boring.
Very informative piece you have here. I didn't know about this before i read. I'm not sure if I would want to be immortal because knowing that you have all of time to accomplish something would make the world a very slowww place.
ReplyDeleteInteresting piece, although I don't know much about a memory of a Jelly Fish, it would be interesting to know if they could continue their memory from their previous life, or if every time they are 'reborn' their memories restart.
ReplyDeleteSo i totally dislike the idea of living forever or being re-born and having to live life all over again. I think its interesting to see this jellyfish go through these cycles, but for a human, its overrated and frankly if it ever begins to be possible, i wouldn't want anything to do with it.
ReplyDeleteIt would be an amazing medical advance if we could find a way to regrow body parts that had been removed for whatever reason, but if we started having immortal humans then our already enormous overwhelmingly gigantic population would need another world to colonize and then another and another and from what we know about the universe and how many Earth-like planets there are "close" by we would be doomed if we found a way to be immortal.
ReplyDeleteReally, interesting it's crazy how it can just regenerate it's whole body eventually cell by cell. Maybe eventually we will evolve into something like this, however, that wouldn't be very good and the planet would overpopulate.
ReplyDeleteI took marine biology in high school and thought jellyfish were one of the coolest animals. While a cure for cancer will be a very positive discovery from these jellyfish, I feel like we could get some negative effects.
ReplyDeleteI think, naturally, dermatologists or beauty companies will pick up the same idea, and make some kind of jellyfish cream that will renew cells so everyone will look young, even in their old age.
Also, I am wondering, would we actually use the jellyfish for the cure for cancer? Like, would we actually have to be killing jellyfish every time we needed to cure cancer?
That is very cool. I didn't know that jellyfish has the ability to do that. I also think it's great that scientists are researching about these jelly fish to cure cancer. I would support something like that, and not something that goes into extending human life, because I feel that would be a bad idea as the population is increasing by seconds.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you mentioned Harry Potter at the end of your article. As I was reading it, I was trying to think about a chapter in the HP series that related to your research on this topic. JK Rowling is so intelligent, the research that she must have done in order to connect the HP books on so many levels, is astonishing.
ReplyDeleteWhile swimming off the East Coast of Africa my neck was stung by jelly fish, but thankfully it wasn't the same type (or maybe it was, within its infancy stage)...I really could live without these little beasts. What purpose do they serve to their ecosystem?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this blog post because it kept me hooked. As I read more it kept getting more interesting. I liked how you tied it to the possibility of human immoratliy. That idea completely freaks me out. I can't imagine the possibily of having the option to live forever and be able to bring yourself back to life.
ReplyDeleteJust as many other people said, the thought of immortality scares me. I think that Mike said it best in saying that people would not savor the good things in life. I think that being able to use the jellyfish to help cure cancer would be a not only a great leap in medicine, but also in humanity. With this though, would come some serious questions of morality.
ReplyDeleteIs it really immortality? It seems to me as if the cells are 're-grown' and actually die off.. therefore not living forever.. Either way the concept of eternal youth has always been interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of immortality has always been of interest to me and it is one idea I have put quite amount of thought in to. First of all great find on the subject matter for the article, the jellyfish are really unique examples and by themselves they are fascinating creatures. Secondly, if I were to consider being immortal I would need a group of people to do it with because the concept of being immortal alone saddens me and seems like an incredibly lonely existence.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking wouldn't think be cool if we could grow organs for humans that could do this. Not to confuse my meaning with making humans immortal. I am thinking along the lines of someone who needs a new kidney, or lung. I know they can grow some organs, from other organs, I wonder how this jellyfish method could be applied to creating needed organs.
ReplyDeleteThe immortality of the jellyfish is really interesting. This could be extremely useful for cloning cells to get rid of disease more then cancer, even just simply things like getting rid of a cold to grow more white blood cells or any other cells that may be infected.
ReplyDeleteI would absolutely hate this if the human biological system worked like this. While it is interesting that these jellyfish are basically immortal, humans are meant to die. Imagine how horrible this world would be if instead of dying, humans simply reverted to being a baby. Overpopulation is bad enough as it is now, I couldn't imagine living in a world like this. On a side note, I found this funny quote by Woody Allen that made me think of Benjamin Button. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/110186
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