14 ms·
Worms frozen in permafrost for up to 42,000 years come back to life
- isostatic 8y agoHopefully the web server will come back to life in less time than that Cached version at https://archive.is/b0WjK https://archive.is/b0WjK
- steve19 8y agoEDIT: It's legit. Thanks to the commenter below. Can anyone in Russia confirm if this is a legit news story? It's being repeated throughout tabloids in the West all referencing this English language Siberian publication, as well as hordes of definite news apsm sites, all appear to be using the same generic images and verbetium or almost verbetium text.
- trhway 8y agohttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0012496618030079 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS001249661803007... the affiliations list top Russian schools as well as Princeton.
- steve19 8y agoThanks. If anyone wants easy access using, uhhh, a friend, here is the DOI https://doi.org/10.1134/S0012496618030079 https://doi.org/10.1134/S0012496618030079
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Demiurge 8y agoYes, I found a pretty legit article actually naming researchers and having better pictures, but it says 30 000 years. Says the paper about this is published in presumably Russian journal 'Doklady Biological Sciences' and there were collaborators in Princeton. https://news.rambler.ru/other/40414227-chervi-s-kolymy-prishli-v-sebya-posle-30-000-let-spyachki/ https://news.rambler.ru/other/40414227-chervi-s-kolymy-prish...
- rossdavidh 8y agoThe OP article mentions two worms, one from around 30,000 years ago and the other from around 42,000.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoDated how, because normally you date permafrost on the layers, but worms by their nature move. Perhaps they're (much) younger but burrowed down?
- tim333 8y agoI was wondering that. It seems a more likely hypothesis unless they have some good way of dating them. Maybe carbon date the worm body? Edit - the paper says >Some factors prevent the opportunity for nematodes to penetrate into permafrost strata many meters deep from the superposed modern tundra soil. The depth of seasonal thawing in the regions under study is up to 80 cm and was no more than 1.5 m even about 9000 years ago, during the Holocene Thermal Maximum. and the samples were 30m down so they are arguing the worms couldn't make it though they have only carbon dated the general soil samples and not the worm bodies.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoThanks for RTFA and reporting back.
- aaron695 8y agoYou are correct the first image is "fake" It's a stock image and it seems to be orders of magnitude larger than it should be. It's been used on sites from fish feeding to gardening - http://www.domikdomovenka.ru/products/vidy-nematod http://www.domikdomovenka.ru/products/vidy-nematod http://akvarium.dp.ua/chem-luchshe-vsego-kormit-ryib/ http://akvarium.dp.ua/chem-luchshe-vsego-kormit-ryib/ Unlike the real ones which would be invisible to the naked eye, see photo two in the article. [edit] Actually at a length of half a mm you could see them with the naked eye, but 20 μm across so maybe not.
- dEnigma 8y agoJust fyi: the term you wanted to use was "verbatim", meaning "word for word"
- sAbakumoff 8y agogoogle search of this news in Russian language provides multiple references, but most of them do not seem very reliable. The titles look like a click bait. "Ancient creatures have awakened in Russia! No one knows what it is!".
- baxtr 8y agoFirst time I see the same news from two different sites trending on HN at the same time...
- biomcgary 8y agoGenome sequencing of the progeny might show mutational biases during the frozen state (in the gonads, at least). It would probably be necessary to sequence an extant population to distinguish between population genetic changes (i.e., evolution) and mutation bias.
- steffan 8y agoIf we can do this, hey, interstellar travel!
- tomcam 8y agoIt’s a great time to be a nematode
- vpribish 8y agoseems like almost any time works if you're a nematode
- dredmorbius 8y agoThese are the wormholes you're looking for.
- mesozoic 8y agoWow I bet those worms are so confused. Imagine when they showed them smart phones! Probably like that movie Encino man (when do we get Encino man 2?)
- mlvljr 8y agoIn 42K years, d00d :)
- andygates 8y agoDude, Where's My Mammoth?
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoAh, the school summer holidays. Such an exciting time for HN comments.
- eletious 8y agoReminds me of the Eternal September...
- mesozoic 8y agoWow you guys really hate jokes :P
- izifortune 8y agoAm I the only one thinking of demolition man right now?
- mozumder 8y agoI'm more "Encino Man" here..
- xevb3k 8y agoI thought the half life of DNA was around 400 years. Anyone know how this is possible?
- goldenkey 8y agoDNA can be repaired. Decay of organic structures is mostly just breaking apart. This is much more reversible than reproducing radioactive elements from decay products.
- picsao 8y agoIt's also Watericecrystalls piercing membranes.
- jacquesm 8y agoHalflife under normal circumstances. Deepfreezing it is not the usual for DNA. Just like your meat and vegetables are still edible when you freeze them a year later and spoil in a matter of hours or days at higher temperatures. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10/05/rspb.2012.1745 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10... So that's at 13.1 degrees, quote from the end of that paper: "Our results indicate that short fragments of DNA could be present for a very long time; at –5°C, the model predicts a half-life of 158 000 years for a 30 bp mtDNA fragment in bone (table 1). Even rough estimates such as this imply that sequenceable bone DNA fragments may still be present more than 1 Myr after deposition in deep frozen environments. It therefore seems reasonable to suggest that future research may identify authentic DNA that is significantly older than the current record of approximately 450–800 kyr from Greenlandic ice cores". So even if they don't have a thermal model where you plug in any temperature and it will give you the half life there is good evidence that lower temperatures significantly increase the chances of DNA remaining intact for much longer than the above-zero half life would suggest.
- xevb3k 8y agoThat’s very interesting, thanks! I now need to go read more about those 450,000 year old fragments.
- mcv 8y ago> Some 300 prehistoric worms were analysed - and two ‘were shown to contain viable nematodes’. This sounds like 300 non-nematode worms were examined, and two of them contained viable nematodes as parasites. Is that correct? Because everything else in the article sounds like the nematodes are the worms, rather than were in the worms. It's a tiny detail, but it's bugging me.
- flashman 8y agoYes, poor article, it's not 300 worms but 300 permafrost samples, of which two contained an unspecified number of viable nematodes :https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1134%2FS0012496618030079.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1134%2FS00124966180... > We analyzed more than 300 samples of permafrost deposits of different ages and origins, buried soils and fossil rodent burrows. Two samples were shown to contain viable nematodes.
- pmiller2 8y agoIt does say “They are both believed to be female,” so, unless it’s a translation error, it’s referring to 2 worms, not 2 samples.
- pvaldes 8y agoI understand that those are Roundworms, not tardigrades. If they start to feed inmediately I understand also that aren't a parasitic species. There are a lot of species living freely in the soil. Why the article was published just now (the samples were taken in 2015) is a most interesting question. Probably related with the current rush to explore the martian ice pole to find life. The siberian experts would add a invaluable experience in how to attack this drill problem avoiding contamination of the sample, and taking a undisturbed core-layers of ice to date it and understand the past climate of mars.
- pvaldes 8y agoHum, It seems that they belong to genus Plectus. This genus have some deep-dwelling species of free-living roundworms. At least eight species of Plectus are well adapted to live in very cold and dry ecosystems from Antarctica also.
- dmix 8y agoNematodes, which were revived here, were also the first cellular species which was found to survive deep in the earths crust - in a study which also featured one of the same Princeton researchers (T. C. Onstott [1]) collaborating with a different group of international researchers: > "Nematode found in mine is first subsurface multicellular organism" > Until now, it was thought that the temperature, energy, oxygen and space constraints of the subsurface biosphere were too extreme for multicellular organisms. [2] This is interesting news but I'm curious if this will be largely limited to this unique type of (multicellular) organism which can survive extreme conditions? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obworm.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obworm.html
- supernova87a 8y agoIsn't this the beginning of some horror body snatching movie?
- taneq 8y agoAre we sure they're really worms? Better get ready to do the hot wire blood test on everyone on that site...
- ethan1saacson 8y agoI misread the title as "Woman frozen ..." and mentally prepared myself for some existentially shattering shit.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoI did the exact same thing, but tweeted about it* instead of saying it here. https://mobile.twitter.com/doreen_michele/status/1022646170575720449 https://mobile.twitter.com/doreen_michele/status/10226461705...
- saagarjha 8y agoI guess you’ve kinda said it here as well ;)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- matte_black 8y agoIndeed, if such a woman had been unfrozen, would she be too important of a scientific discovery to ever be allowed to live a normal human life again? Would she just be a research subject quarantined and experimented on for the rest of her days?
- allthenews 8y agoWhat does it mean for a reanimated woman from 42000 years ago to live a "normal" life in modern times?
- cweagans 8y agoAll kinds of new fun diseases, probably.
- CrazyCatDog 8y agoMany have wondered the same. I personally think Brandon Frasier's perspective in the film, "Encino Man," was quite apt.
- marzell 8y agoFor anyone wondering about previous precedents for reviving frozen multicellular creatures, here's my response to a now-deleted comment: There are shorter-term examples of frogs [0] (up to a few years) and tardigrades [1] (30 years) but I haven't heard of anything on this timescale before. [0]http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-frozen-frogs-20140723-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-... [1]https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10785002/water-bear-tardigrade-frozen-30-years-reproduction https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10785002/water-bear-tardi... Edit: formatting
- prolikewh0a 8y agoTardigrades are hardcore. From Wikipedia: Tardigrades are considered to be able to survive even complete global mass extinction events due to astrophysical events, such as gamma-ray bursts, or large meteorite impacts. Some of them can withstand extremely cold temperatures down to 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero), while others can withstand extremely hot temperatures up to 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C) for several minutes, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce. Tardigrades that live in harsh conditions undergo an annual process of cyclomorphosis, allowing for survival in sub-zero temperatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
- i_feel_great 8y agoWould these worms have been snap-frozen? I.e., they did not freeze slowly so that ice crystals did not form in their cells killing them. How would snap freezing work in these environments.
- dekhn 8y agocryptobiosis. they have the ability to remove the majority of water, which greatly reduces enzyme activity, and package everything so it stays pretty stable but reactivates when wetted and warmed.
- cweagans 8y agoSo these are probably the oldest living organisms in existence then, huh? I'm not aware of anything that's older than 42000 years, but I'd be amazed to be wrong :)
- dredmorbius 8y agoSpores in amber and salt deposits have been revived after 40 and 240 million years, respectively. There are colonial organisms over 40,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis... http://www.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060 http://www.extremescience.com/OldestLivingThing.htm http://www.extremescience.com/OldestLivingThing.htm
- vkou 8y agoThere are many reasons to doubt that the '240 million year old bacteria' were actually 240 million years old. https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/18/6/1143/1046940 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/18/6/1143/1046940
- dredmorbius 8y agoTrue, though even without those, we're well past 42,000 years.
- vkou 8y agoIt's not noise, it's contamination with modern bacteria.
- dredmorbius 8y agohttp://science.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060 Amber. 42mya.
- Karishma1234 8y agoOne thing that I have always worried about Antartic ice melting and unleashing some ancient black death like plague for which we dont have any immunity.
- ajuc 8y agoIt would be extremely unlikely for ancient (millions years old) organism to be better at penetrating human immune system than organisms that evolved in arms race with us. It's like taking a DOS virus and expecting it to infect iphones :)
- piker 8y agoIs it true that the human "OS" (i.e., genome) has changed that radically?
- ajuc 8y agoDepends how far back "ancient" is. But most sicknesses only infect closely related species, and homo sapiens is here for maybe 100 000 years, so I wouldn't be too worried. On the other hand I'm very afraid what will happen when people can download, tweak, and 3d-print viruses as a hobby.
- neuronic 8y agoI suppose it's how the Earth ecosystem delivers the bill for our damaging behavior. I still believe the planetary ecosystem has a way of ridding itself of annoying biomass if a tipping point is reached. Who knows what will hit us and how fast it will hit us. Permafrost viruses, dramatic temperature changes and generally more energy in the weather system due to global warming, catastrophic ocean acidification leading to the death of trillions and trillions of plankton, robbing us of oxygen to breathe.... there's likely a trove of "problems" we will face sooner rather than later.
- Karishma1234 8y agoThat is a typical christian thinking where you try to think of humans as sinners. The reality is that modern human is far more sensitive towards wildlife, nature, trees and air quality. A typical modern human is having less babies than ever too. We are not damaging the earth.
- redleggedfrog 8y agoWTF is "siberiantimes.com". About page got nothing. Credible source? I'm thinking not so much. Why is this here?
- lucasgonze 8y agoLikely the oldest living creatures in 3 billion years of life on earth.
- omeid2 8y agoYou wish —jellyfish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
- dEnigma 8y agoI doubt that any "immortal jellyfish" has actually lived that long in the wild, even though they have the theoretical potential to do so.
- zaarn 8y agoI don't think any of them survived that long. Current record holders are some bacteria in the Russian permafrost with half a million years (without reproduction in the meantime)
- pouta 8y agoThis was an amazing read. Thank you for sharing this!
- mandy12xx 8y agoCan anyone explain how the age of nematodes is confirmed to be 42,000 years from the age of deposits: The duration of natural cryopreservation of the nematodes corresponds to the age of the deposits, 30000–40000 years.
- viach 8y agoDoes it mean there are chances of finding something alive in permafrost on Mars?
- okonomiyaki3000 8y agoThis is great news for everyone on the Paleo Diet.
- pouta 8y agoCould you elaborate? How is this finding related?
- ibrault 8y agoPaleolithic Era pun maybe? No idea hahah
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoI assume it's because now there's literally something for you to eat from the paleolithic?
- sAbakumoff 8y agoAlso, reminds old x-files episode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(The_X-Files) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(The_X-Files) Hope mass rage has not started yet in Siberia.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoMe too, which reminds me, I really need to re-watch all of them one of these days.
- sAbakumoff 8y agohurry up; don't wait until these worms crawl after you! :-)
- meggar 8y agoalso Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer from SNL
- buu700 8y agoIt took me way too many passes to realize that the title said "worms" and not "woman". That was really confusing.
- montrose 8y agoDoes this make these worms the oldest living things?
- dekhn 8y agoNematodes are funny. I was curious, so I bought a simple inspection microscope and bought some agar plates with E.Coli on them. You can easily sample nematodes by cutting up rotting fruit and putting it on the edge of the plates. the nematodes will cruise out of the fruit and cruise around the E.Coli eating it, leaving tracks. Then you can make a worm pick, isolate and clean nematodes, and transfer them to other plates or slides for closer inspection. Of all the model organisms, C. Elegans is far and away the most amazing.
- refractal 8y agohttps://mashable.com/2017/12/13/siberian-times-best-of/#EqTVzwjh7qqQ https://mashable.com/2017/12/13/siberian-times-best-of/#EqTV...
- vadiml 8y agoWhat a shitty reporting: no reporter name, no scientist(s) name. Coming from the country where secret services are known to fake urine samples from sportsmen... I wouldn't take it at the face value...
- stronglikedan 8y agoWhat, you don't think anyone would be named "The Siberian Times reporter"?
- thrillgore 8y agoIsn't this part of the premise behind The Thing?
- baalimago 8y agoWhat i find most interesting must be how this sort of creature came to be. It's "evolutionary strategy" must be to simply get frozen, only to get defrozen every thousand years or so, eat and procreate, then when the cold comes get frozen once more for even more years. So, I just assume that this creature must've survived several hundreds of thousands of years by being frozen and only procreating when the earth becomes warm enough
- staplers 8y agoLife.. uh.. finds a way