Scientists have tried very hard to kill this jellyfish.
They’ve starved it, stabbed it, cut it into pieces...
And it survives, by essentially aging in reverse, over and over again.
It’s the size of your pinky nail, and a handful of researchers have become fascinated by it.
Specifically, its ability to cheat death, and potentially, live forever.
What they discover may teach us how to fight the effects of aging in humans.
Most jellyfish start life as a larva that settles and grows into a kind of stalk called a polyp.
The polyp then produces individual jellies, which mature into adult medusae that reproduce and then die.
But this is where Turritopsis dohrnii is unique.
Sometimes an adult doesn’t die.
Under threat, it can transform its dying adult medusa cells into new cells that form a healthy polyp.
That polyp then continues its life cycle, producing new copies of the original adult jellyfish.
Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta is one of the only researchers in the world who studies how Turritopsis dohrnii does this.
They’re notoriously hard to catch and keep in a lab.
But she’s found that they’ve spread worldwide as hitchhikers on ships,
and they adapt incredibly well to new environments.
And she thinks that’s because of how they reverse age.
And so what we want to know is what happens in the cyst stage,
which is a very crucial stage of the entire cycle.
Right, when a dying jellyfish becomes a new polyp.
Our DNA is constantly under threat.
Exposure to the sun, tobacco smoke, and even cell division can cause mutations– and cancer.
Aging can also cause harmful changes in the expression of genes in our cells.
But there’s evidence that we might be able to reset those changes.
Scientists can now reprogram cells in adult mice to make them young stem cells,
a kind of master cell that can then become almost any kind of adult cell.
If you take any diseased cell and if you go under this reprogramming process,
you could reverse some of these aging marks.
Dr. Pradeep Reddy studies how to erase signs of aging in cells.
He says that reprogramming adult cells in this way is promising but risky.
Stem cells are hard to control and can lead to tumors.
The process is also indirect and can take up to six months.
That’s why some researchers are looking to what Turritopsis dohrnii does-
transforming older cells into other specialized young cells, skipping the stem cell stage.
Since it’s direct, this process, called transdifferentiation, only takes one to two weeks.
In mice, scientists have used transdifferentiation to produce more insulin, and some studies suggest that it can treat brain disease.
Transdifferentiation could someday be used to replace lost or damaged neurons in the brain.
And there’s a chance that these little jellyfish could teach us new ways to do it.