“A major discovery”, rejoices Professor Teymuras Kurzchalia, from the University of Dresden. Scientists have successfully resuscitated a worm that had been frozen in Siberian permafrost for about 46,000 years. This unknown species, which therefore lived at the time of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, remained for millennia “between life and death”, explains the professor to CNN. Scientists named it Panagrolaimus kolymaenis.
Kept in ice 40 meters deep, this microscopic worm was in cryptobiosis, a state in which metabolism is shut down so it can withstand extreme temperatures and complete dehydration. Species capable of reaching this state can thus “stop life and resume it from the beginning”, summarizes Teymuras Kurzchalia.
To bring it back to life, the scientists simply rehydrated the worm. If this is not the first time that such an operation has taken place, the species which had been thus resuscitated had only spent a few decades in a cryptobiotic state, but never several millennia. This is therefore a great first.
The discovered species, however, has commonalities with another type of worm commonly used in the laboratory, Caenorhabditis elegans: both produce a sugar called trehalose, which allows them to survive dehydration and freezing. “It is striking to find the same biochemical process in a species that dates back 200 or 300 million years,” says Professor Kurzchalia.
