Human body freezing technology has developed technology to protect people and animals by deeply cooling the body, and is one of the promising medical fields. Research on it will not only help slow the progress of deadly diseases, but will also help future people travel in outer space.
This micronematode is only about a millimeter long - the favorite model organism of scientists
1999 In 1999, Swedish Anna Bogenholm (Anna Bogenholm) experienced something unimaginable: she fell off the ice while skiing, and her heart stopped beating due to severe hypothermia. The woman was almost dead after a few hours, and her temperature dropped to 13.7 degrees Celsius. But she was rescued and after 10 days of hospitalization, she opened her eyes.
Anna Bogenholm How did this incident survive? Now, scientists are trying to understand what exactly happened in living cells during intense cooling, although so far they have not worked with humans, but with tiny soil worm Caenorhabditis elegans), which has served biologists as a model object for nearly half a century.
Study the response of worms to cooling, and scientists found that reducing worms' body temperature can extend their lifespan: they keep the animals at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius for a full week (at least a quarter of the worm's short lifespan), and after returning to active life, the average lifespan of these worms is one week longer than their unfrozen counterparts.
Further research shows that C. elegans can survive in the cold through a special protein . The iron in this protein is stored in our body, namely ferritin . Under normal circumstances, ferritin acts as a trap for free iron atoms, but when the temperature drops, it plays a protective role to prevent the cold from damaging living cells. Strangely, when scientists let mammalian neurons produce ferritin and then expose them to the cold, they survived much better in temperature drops than normal cells. Some drugs that mimic the effects of ferritin also have similar effects.
After studying the reaction of Carean elegans to the cold, scientists plan to continue researching the closest human relative, primates. Although Carean elegans is very phylogenetic and humans, our basic cellular processes are the same, and in the future, knowing how to safely place the human body in a cold-felt state will help slow neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer's disease ). ) and allows humans to spend months in space.
So far, scientists have only outlined the direct prospects—studying the effects of ferritin produced in cells on the ability of living mammals (such as laboratory mice) to withstand the body's cooling.
This study was published in the journal "Natural Communication ".
