In the fairy tale of the Grimm brothers , the princess fell into a deep sleep. 100 years later, when a prince kissed her, she woke up and was still as young and beautiful as before.
In reality, whether it is human sleep or hibernation of snake , it will continue to grow old. However, among known organisms, slow-step animal ( water bear ) in the dry state can do this (and some plants, bacteria, and fungi are also fine).
In the dormant state, the lifespan of water bear insects has been extended from about 3 months to dozens or hundreds of years. Therefore, in the academic world, this is also called the "Sleeping Beauty" model. But it was not known before whether their aging rate changes in the frozen state, or whether aging stopped. The mystery of
has now been solved, and the latest experiments have proved that the "100-year-old sleeping beauty" mechanism of slow-step animals is also suitable for freezing. Frozen temporal animals do not age.
This has pushed open another gap to the possibility of human beings freezing.
"Physical/magic damage is invalid"
temporal animals are very good at adapting to harsh environmental conditions.
In 2019, experiments have shown that under anhydrous conditions, temporal animals can survive intact for many years in a dry state.
For most organisms, losing water is fatal, and the reasons also include the physical level - the cell membrane will wrinkle and rupture; at the "magic" level - the loss of water molecules will produce a large amount of peroxide in the organism, similar to the feeling of shattering DNA under radiation.
. In the process of adapting to their living environment, the water bear insects have evolved a unique adaptation method: in anhydrous environment, they will create special protein in their bodies, forming crisscrossing scaffolds to fill the inside of the cells and support the cells to prevent them from fragmenting. Going further, another protein called "damage suppressor" directly binds to DNA for wrapping protection.
This protein allows slow-step animals to remain unscathed under extreme conditions such as high and low temperatures - they no longer show any obvious signs of life until the conditions are suitable and resurrected.
Generally speaking, cellular senescence is closely related to metabolism and cell damage. The dry water bearworms have stopped metabolism and their cells are protected, so this raises the question, is their internal aging clock stopped? Will this state of static age? Sleeping beauty under dryness is also suitable for frozen
dry slow-step animals, waiting for the next rain in their habitat, dreaming for years.
According to previous research, the article "Dehydration of temporal animals and its impact on life span" pointed out that during inactivity, the internal clock of the water bear insect does stop and will only resume operation after the organism is reactivated. Because of this, slow-step animals that usually live for a few months can live for decades.
So frozen?
To explore this, a research team conducted multiple experiments. They frozen over 500 temporal animals in total at -30°C, thawing them again, count, feed and freeze them again.
is repeated so until all temporal animals end their lifespan.
At the same time, the control group was kept at room temperature. The experimental results are: after subtracting the time of freezing, the frozen group and the control group have almost exactly the same lifespan.
If the freezing time is included, the oldest water bear insects in the freezing group survived for 169 days, and if the freezing time is not included, they survived for 94 days; while the oldest animal in the control group survived for 93 days. The time when
was excluded from the frozen state, the average lifespan of the water bear insects in the three frozen groups was 77.42 days, while the average lifespan of the control group was 72.6 days.
Researchers published this experiment in the recent issue of the Journal of Zoology, titled "Slowing Aging in a Frozen State". This is the first proof that the "Sleeping Beauty" mode of slow-step animals is suitable for low-temperature freezing - it will not age when frozen.
is written at the end
Now we can be sure that after being frozen, the slow-step animals will stop their internal clocks like sleeping beauty.
So what about human freezing? Freezing is a very complex physical process. Since there are creatures that can make humans unable to one day.
Scientists have begun to explore the editing of our genes in the direction of the water bearworm. An article published on ACS Synthetic Biology on February 18, 2022, "Inspired by extreme tolerance organisms, natural and designed proteins can form condensates in human cells and attenuate apoptosis" pointed out that when the gene of the water bearworm's unique damage inhibitor protein was inserted into human cells in the laboratory, the self-destruction program of human cells under extreme conditions - cell apoptosis was significantly inhibited.
Who will awaken the great dream first? I know it in my life. Maozi felt that although this technology was still in the stage of petri dish in the laboratory, the future was promising. If someone fooled me to pay for money to freeze myself and beat him one second later.
Author thanks for your attention (- _-)
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