Creature discovered that can literally "rejuvenate"

(NLDO) - Before the eyes of researchers, the strange creatures have reversed the aging process and are "17 years old again", even looking like newborns.

According to Science Alert, a research team tried to put a colony of comb jellies Mnemiopsis leidyi through a difficult period in the laboratory. And they witnessed this strange group of creatures rejuvenate right before their eyes.

This particular experiment started by accident when marine biologist Joan Soto-Angel, from the University of Bergen (Norway), was puzzled when an adult Mnemiopsis leidyi he was keeping in a laboratory tank suddenly lost its plump gelatinous lobes.

That's the most obvious identifying feature of an adult jellyfish. In other words, this jellyfish has suddenly turned into a "juvenile".

The rejuvenating creature Mnemiopsis leidyi changed shape when starved - Photo: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Dr. Soto-Angel feels current studies may not tell the full story.

Previous studies have also observed the species dramatically reducing body size and mass during starvation as a means of survival, but experiments have ruled out the possibility of reverse aging.

So Dr. Soto-Angel teamed up with colleagues at the Pawel Burkhardt Michael Sars Center (Norway) to conduct a larger experiment.

They kept 65 healthy adult jellyfish in separate tanks, all of which had completely absorbed their tentacles as juveniles and developed other characteristics typical of adulthood.

All were starved for 15 days, then fed small amounts once a week, a much less intense regimen than normal.

Fifteen of the animals were also lobotomized before the experiment began, increasing the stress they experienced, which would trigger their survival instincts.

As expected, the creatures shrank. But that wasn't all. They began absorbing the adult lobes into their bodies.

"Over the course of several weeks, they not only changed their morphology but also had completely different feeding behavior, typical of jellyfish larvae," said Dr. Soto-Angel.

After the experiment, seven of the intact jellyfish looked like fully fledged juveniles, while six of the 15 lobed ones had returned to "adolescent" age, equivalent to 17 years old in humans.

We already know that comb jellies are quite special: They have the ability to regenerate lost body parts, even merge two seriously injured ones into one to continue living.

They only produce an anus when absolutely necessary and completely disregard normal biological rules, for example being able to reproduce sexually at a stage known as a larva.

"It will be interesting to reveal the molecular mechanisms that drive reverse growth and what happens to the animal's neural network during this process," said Dr. Burkhardt.

Meanwhile, Dr. Soto-Angel said that the discovery that this creature can reverse the aging process raises interesting questions about how widespread this ability is across the entire animal tree of life.

Before Mnemiopsis leidyi, another immortal jellyfish species, Turritopsis dohrnii, was also shown to have the ability to reverse aging, although not as miraculously as in this new experiment.

The new discovery was just published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/phat-hien-sinh-vat-co-the-cai-lao-hoan-dong-theo-nghia-den-196241108095219826.htm