Tardigrade Research Paper

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For over 250 years Tardigrades have fascinated and baffled Scientist with their resistances to extreme temperatures and intriguing regeneration properties. Tardigrades are microscopic blobby bodied entities more commonly known as water bears. They were made famous for their unique ability to survive in extreme conditions such as freezing colds and searing heats. They can withstand temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and withstand temperatures as low as -328 degrees Fahrenheit. Apart from being able to survive in such extreme conditions the Tardigrades can prove itself resilient to boiling, high-pressure and radiation! Recent studies have shown that this organism may owe its unique high resistance and regenerative properties to a special protein coded into it DNA. These …show more content…

Researchers took a closer and believed that the key to achieving this was in a sugar called trehalose which can be found in other types of animals and is also known to have properties that help build up a tolerance to dry conditions, but they were however mistaken for prior studies have found little evidence that the sugar is present in Tardigrades genetic make up. This set back made scientist approach this differently, they took a Tardigrade that was in its tun form and managed to figure out which genes are most active while they are in that state and followed by looking into what those genes actually do. Doing so scientist were able to discover that certain genes were expressing a type of protein that is unique to tardigrades. Which scientist later labeled as TDPs (Tardigrades-Specific Disordered Proteins). They also found out that in some species of tardigrades the genes that produced TDPs were highly active all the time while in other tardigrades the genes were only active under certain

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