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.
