WEBVTT - Tardigrades: Nature's Cuddly, Indestructible Microanimal 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:04.640 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:13.440 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:17.439 Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. This is 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:23.960 stuff you should know about Toward Grades. Uh never heard 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:27.960 of these little guys, and now they have shot into 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:34.280 the top five alongside the octopus and uh, what's the 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:39.319 other one that I jellyfish? Jellyfish. These little dudes. Want 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:41.919 to hug them. I might be hugging them right now, 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.600 you could well, probably not, probably not, But I love them. 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:52.240 They're cute them, they're tiny that not hardly anybody knows 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.959 what they are. I would say they're I would say 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.800 of people listening, do not know what this is? Really? 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:00.720 So I was under the US and that they were 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:02.920 kind of a big hit on the internet within the 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.480 last couple of years. Well, I'm not happy to that stuff. 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:08.520 So maybe, okay, it might have been a part of 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:11.440 a meme. I don't know what political meme. Yeah, I 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.600 think I think tart grades had a had a moment. 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:17.240 But it turns out that they they've been around for 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:22.120 much longer than the Internet. Yeah, yeah, hundreds of millions 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:25.040 of years. Yeah, somewhere around the neighborhood of six hundred 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:29.640 million years, which would make them Precambrian explosion, which makes 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:33.880 them really old PC. Yeah, so before we get into that, 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:37.560 let's tell you what we're talking about. A tart of 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:41.720 grade also known as a water bear. Cute name. This 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:49.200 is my favorite moss piglet um pigmy rhinoceros pigmy armadillo. 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:55.640 I don't like armadillos ever since our lepers episode. UM. 0:01:55.800 --> 0:02:04.160 They are a little tiny micro scopic animals, animals, multicellular 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:09.679 animals that UM reproduce sexually. In a lot of cases 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.680 that UM are well, they're animals. They're not just like, 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.320 they're not bacteria and that viruses. They're not bugs. They're 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.720 very very small. They get to be about a half 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:24.560 to one millimeter in size depending on the species. And UM. 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:30.800 They're also super cute depending on your view of things. Yes, 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:34.120 first thing you should do, if you're at home or 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:37.880 if you're not driving, let's say, is pull at your 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:42.720 phone or your or your desktop, pull out your desktop 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:45.600 and look up charted grade and just look at a 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.280 little picture of it, and you know, so you know 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:51.600 what we're talking about. UM, if you ask me. People 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:53.640 liking it to a panda bear. I don't quite get that, 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:55.880 although the have Have Have you seen the picture of the 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.440 one on its back? No, I don't think I did. 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:00.320 Very cute. Looks like you just wants to maratches a 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:03.960 little belly. But it looks to me like if moth 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:09.280 caterpillar and a naked mole rat and unholy union. That 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:13.120 was awesome. That was the best analogy of that. That's 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.480 kind of what looks like to me, um holy, I think, yeah, 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:25.040 they managed to do it somehow. Tells uh the name 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:29.280 tarte grade is from Latin and it actually means slow walker, 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.600 which is cute in and of itself, and that supposedly 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:41.040 was named by um. This Italian scientists named Lazaro Spitzani. 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.680 Tell him the name of his book. I love this name. 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:51.000 His book was Oh boy, Opa scorely de Fistia and Nimala. 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:56.400 The bield not bad, not bad. You didn't raise your 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.960 your fingers though, that's right. But he named this guy 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:03.280 he found this well, he didn't discover it. Apparently before him. 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.560 In seventeen seventy three, a German pastor name Johan all 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:11.960 Goes from gets Uh discovered it. But he is the 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:17.000 one Spottsani is the one who named it uh, which 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:19.640 means slow stepper. Yeah. And the reason he called it 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.320 that is because if you look under a microscope at 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.200 all the stuff, which was all the rage in the 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:27.680 late eighteenth century, look at all this stuff. After why 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.600 was his name Anton von Leavin hook Am I saying 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.320 that correctly? I don't remember. I'm pretty sure. Um. After 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.960 he started to invent microscopes, and they there you spread, 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.960 people started looking at what was in debris and rain gutters. 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.120 The added water to it, and they found that when 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.880 you add water to stuff that was just dried up 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.039 dust and a rain gutter, all of a sudden you 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:50.560 saw that there was a bunch of things that came 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:54.760 to life. And most of those things move around really 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:57.320 really fast, just starting about like, oh, it's over here, 0:04:57.400 --> 0:04:58.840 let's go over there. I want to go over there. 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.359 They have like very short engine spans, right tartar grades 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.400 lumber about. They kind of fall and flip over a 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.359 lot as they're climbing over like pieces of dust and 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.680 other particles. Um. And they move much more slowly and 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.400 and I guess deliberately compared to their other microscopic friends 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:21.880 in the in the rain got or debris, so that's 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.520 where they got their name. Um. They have eight legs, 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.400 a little little short, little stubby legs right into their 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:35.440 rear legs are inverted right, so they're facing forward instead 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:40.320 of backward, and they face backwards. They face backwards instead 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.920 of forward. And all their legs have little claws at 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.480 the end right for climbing, for climbing, and the first 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:50.120 three pairs of legs are used for swimming. The back 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:55.760 are you're used for climbing only in rudder work the 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:57.720 front with battle and they steer with the rear they 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.920 make dream hands. Uh. And what are they climbing over? Well, 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.480 it depends. You can find them all over the place, um, 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.200 but mainly if they're on dry land, they're they're living 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.760 in moss, fallen leaves, um, stuff that you would find 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.680 in a gutter lichen. Yeah, yeah, things that typically um 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.800 have moisture in them because water bears tartar grades UM 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:26.760 survive when they're surrounded by moisture. Right when they're amid moisture, freshwater, 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.960 salt water doesn't matter, No, it doesn't inventil the kind 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:34.240 of course. Right. So there they apparently originated in the 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:39.200 sea because the species of tartar grades that are marine 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:44.240 based are the least evolved, I guess you'd put it. Then, Yeah, 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:47.320 you've got freshwater ones, and then you've got ones that 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.760 are terrestrial that you can find on land, and those 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:51.680 are the ones that live in lichens and moss and 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:56.440 stuff like that. Um, and all of them again are 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:00.600 part of this branch of the family tree that's its 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:05.000 own phylum. Tarta grata is a phylum. And this article 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.360 makes the point that, um, if you look at humans, 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:14.040 where where we share a phylum Cordata with like snakes 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:20.200 and um, every other vertebrate on Earth. Right, these guys 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:22.920 have their own file there, in their own club. They 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:24.960 really are. So that says two things. That they're a 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.040 very ancient line and that there's a ton of them, 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:31.080 a lot of them. Yeah. And there are there's water 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:33.400 bears everywhere. Yeah, and we mentioned that they're animals. And 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:35.680 if you look at a picture, it's probably from them all. 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:39.160 Not probably, it's definitely from a microscope. And so you 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.800 know you think that again like it's just some sort 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.800 of bacteria or something, um, but it's not. It is 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.360 an animal. It has a brain as a nervous system, 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.040 It has a little stomach and little tiny intestines, has 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:56.120 a little tiny anus, little tiny esophagus, and uh, they 0:07:56.160 --> 0:08:00.440 don't have heart and lungs or veins. Because I was 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.240 gonna say open source, they are open uh hemail, as 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:07.800 the lady on the internet said, which means that gas 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:14.240 exchange and nutrient exchange happens because every cell in the 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:18.880 tartar grades body is touching the the interior body cavity. 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.920 So as food and air goes through the mouth and 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:28.720 out his tiny venus, right, Um, those nutrients and those 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:32.160 gases get to get passed into the cells that get 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.560 pass that that it passes by. Yeah, it's like a 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.040 studio apartment. It's actually extremely efficient. Sure. So they're about 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:43.440 a thousand species or more of tartar grades um. Six 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.280 hundred or so on land, about three hundred marine and 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:50.000 about a hundred in the fresh water. Um. They lay eggs, 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.920 some of them have sex, some of them don't. Some 0:08:55.000 --> 0:09:00.320 of them self fertilize. Yeah, that's pretty interesting stuff. Else, 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:04.280 they eat the fluids of plants or they some of 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.160 them are carnivores. Yeah, the fluids of animals. There's always 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:09.680 got to be fluid. Yeah, they have like a piercing 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:12.680 mouth part. I believe that can pierce cell wall and 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:15.560 just suck the fluids and proteins and stuff out of 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.600 a cell. And depending on the species that cell, maybe 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.400 plant based, or it may be animal based, including other 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:26.920 tartar grades, which is decidedly less cute cannibalism. Sure so, 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.360 if you're sitting there right now and you're thinking, I 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.480 don't see how this rivals and octopus, these are just tiny, 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:37.199 little maybe kind of cute, but tiny little animals. What's 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:41.199 the big whoop? Uh? Right after this break, we'll tell 0:09:41.240 --> 0:10:04.160 you what the big wholp is. All Right, we're back 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.840 with the big whoop about tartar grades. Despite the size 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.200 of these things, how big were they? Again? Uh? In 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.920 a if you look at a magazine article, they're about 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.320 half the size of a period at the end of 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:21.520 a sentence. That's a what's a magazine? No? No, that's true, 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.840 you say that, but it's true. That's a good way 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.840 to put it though. So they're that tiny, and they 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:34.480 are one of the toughest, most resilient creatures on the 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:39.720 planet Earth. Period they're probably the most resilient animal or 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.920 organism on Earth. Amazing. All right, let's talk about it. 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:47.800 Let's talk about temperature. Yeah, they like it that like 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:50.760 seventy degrees and nothing else. Right, So, well, what's weird 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.640 is there's this longstanding tradition and biology of trying to 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:59.160 kill tartar grades under really not so conditions. Let's see 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:01.880 what these little guy can take. Basically, I'm not quite 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:06.120 sure how it started, but somebody figured out um fairly 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:12.520 fairly early on that they could withstand amazingly cold temperatures. Right, 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.280 so we're talking like down to basically absolute zero, a 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.560 couple just a couple of degrees above absolute zero. And 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:24.559 to understand how crazy that anything could survive at absolute zero. 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:31.200 That's where like atomic movement based ceases, because absolute zero 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.080 there's no movement of atoms or molecules any longer, right, 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.400 because that's what he does. Heat energies the movement of 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:40.480 atoms and molecules, so cold, by contrast, is the cessation 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.360 or the lesser movement of atoms. Right, we're talking negative 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:49.720 to seventy two celsius negative fahrenheit. So targe grades have 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:54.319 been kept at that temperature for twenty hours and then 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:59.280 thought out and they said that's what you got. You 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.640 got a tickto this is great. I think I fell 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:07.200 the fly on my shoulder. Uh yeah, seemingly unharmed. Um. 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.400 They put them on ice uh at negative two hundred 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.280 celsius and not absolute zero, but they've iced them down 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.920 for years in a row, thought them out. They were 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:22.160 right back to normal. Amazing. Then on the other side, 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:26.160 they've exposed them to extraordinarily hot temperatures like a hundred 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:30.280 and fifty degrees celsius and um, we should say so 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.880 the fact that they're surviving that's like, wow, fifty degrees celsius. 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:39.480 That's hot. Absolute zero, that's cold. The reason why it's 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:44.480 so incredibly just mind boggling that Tarte grades can survive 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.000 this and still be animals is that they appear to 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:51.160 be the only life that can survive these conditions. The 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:55.120 reason why is if you freeze and your multicellular your 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.160 cells are liable to freeze themselves, and there's gonna be 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.400 all sorts of cellular damage when the ice crystals form 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.280 in your cells, they're gonna rupture yourselves because ice expands 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:09.600 when it freezes. Right. It's also less to yes, we 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.079 did a frostbite frost. So the fact that they can 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.400 come back to life after being exposed to these really 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.840 cold temperatures means that they've got something going on that's 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:22.520 keeping their cells from rupturing. Science has no idea why. 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.520 On the other hand, with heat, tremendous heat. When you 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:27.959 are you expose a cell to a hundred and fifty 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.440 egrees celsius, which is above the boiling point of water, 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:36.320 right you are, your proteins are gonna unfold and pool 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:40.360 and coagulate and be totally useless. So you can't come 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.160 back to life because all of the processes and the 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.720 building blocks of life are useless in your body, and 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:48.800 you would have to start from scratch, which is tough 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:51.400 to catch up to when you're trying to to come 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:55.160 back alive from being exposed to high temperatures. Tarte grades 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.520 do it all right. So they flash freeze them, They 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.280 freeze them for years, They boil them, they try and 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.319 smash them to the tune of fifty eight hundred pounds 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.560 per square inch of pressure. And the Tartar grade was like, 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:13.040 bring it, yeah, no problem. And we're talking about pressures 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.240 that are six times greater than the greatest pressures found 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:20.960 anywhere on Earth. And they withstand it. Uh, they blasted them. 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.640 They tried to suffocate them. They prepped tiny little hands 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.400 around their throat. They put on tiny black gloves first 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:30.560 so they didn't leave any of it. Now, they tried 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:36.080 to suffocate him with carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:42.400 nitrogen UM. They've shot them with gamma raise what the 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:46.040 X rays. Yeah, they found there was a French study 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:50.320 that found that um. It took five hundred and seventy 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:53.720 thousand room Gin's I think that's how you say it 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.920 to kill fifty of the tartar grades in a sample 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.280 but still lived. And that's five hundred and seventy thousand. 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:05.080 It takes five hundred to kill a human, but it 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.680 took five hundred and seventy thousand to kill half, just 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:10.960 half of the tartar grades in a sample. Yeah, they 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:12.800 shot them up into space and I think about half 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:16.200 of those lived, right, So they literally, like he said, 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:18.800 they're trying to come up with newer and more creative 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:22.400 ways to kill these things. And the tartar grades take 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:27.160 all comers basically. And there they have a couple of mechanisms. Again, 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.520 science is trying to figure out one how their cells 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:31.920 keep from freezing in a way that they would rupture 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.280 or how their proteins keep from unfolding. But like that 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:41.640 kind of radiation exposure should do all sorts of horrible things. 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:43.880 You should go listen to our radiation sickness episode. That 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:45.800 was a good one, But it should do all sorts 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.600 of horrible things, like break up the n A. But 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.800 apparently they have some sort of mechanism to prevent this 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.440 from happening, right while they have a mechanism to stitch 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:58.080 it back together. And apparently they also produce a protein 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.640 called de s up that UH acts as a shield 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:05.120 that wraps itself around DNA and and basically shields the 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:10.480 DNA from radiation exposure to begin with. So um, they 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:14.360 have all these these natural processes, but they also have 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:20.280 passive processes as well that that include basically like going 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.040 into a state of suspended animation depending on the conditions. Yeah, 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:29.880 there are two things called um uh an oxybiosis and cryptobiosis. 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.760 Those are two of the three states where these things live. Um. 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:35.800 The other one is just the active state, which is 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.600 just a regular living normal charter grade. That's where they're 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.760 doing all their daily life basically, which I don't think 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.880 we mentioned. You know, there's not a lot to that part. No, 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:48.480 And apparently researchers are like, we have no idea what 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:50.640 role they play in ecosis. Yeah, that's kind of what 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.280 I was wondering, Like, they're indestructible. They're gonna be the 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:57.320 only thing left maybe after our nuclear annihilation or global 0:16:57.320 --> 0:16:59.880 warming has wiped us off the face of the earth. Uh, 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.760 but why nobody knows? Who knows? Maybe they're going to 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:05.600 grow up and be big boys one day. Well No, 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:07.760 that's a really great question though, because if you think 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.000 about it, you're like, why would these things be able 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:14.159 to withstand pressure six times greater than what's present on Earth, 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:16.960 or radiation like you would never find on Earth, or 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:21.119 temperatures like you would never doesn't make any sense until 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:23.359 you stop and think, like, there doesn't have to be 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.359 a reason. It could just be that they have strategies 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:29.480 that they used to defend themselves against certain conditions on 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:34.399 Earth that are just just totally unrelatedly, also happened to 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.000 cover these other conditions that we humans try to launch 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.840 them into that a tartar grade would never would never 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:45.119 evolve to take on. But they can still withstand it. 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:47.240 Like you asked the tartar grade and They're like, We're 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.399 just trying to survive dude, right, Like, why you have 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.720 to lay a purpose on it? What's with your hangups? 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.960 So the first one I mentioned, the an oxybiosis set 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.160 s whim. If you like starve them of oxygen, they 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.480 will puff up, uh in a little ball and stay 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:07.520 that way. Basically, Yeah, I guess they lose their ability 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:12.520 to um regulate fluid transmission in and out of their cells, 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.160 and fluid rushes in and they puff up and they 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:17.920 can stay that way I think for a few days, 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.199 and then after that they die. But not bad. A 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.480 few days of being completely saturated with water not bad. Uh. 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.480 The other one that's really amazing though, is a cryptobiosis. 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:32.359 So uh, we said that they do need this water. Um. 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.320 If they doesn't mean they have to live in the water, 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.280 but they need water. Um. But if this water eventually 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.359 goes away and you dry them up, they pull in 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:45.240 their feet, they pull in their head, and they basically 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.920 stop metabolizing. They go into this weird state of suspended 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.239 animation where they say, all right, I'm I'm basically you 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:55.600 think I'm dead. By all accounts, I look like I 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.199 would be dead, but I'm not and it's called a 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:01.840 ton state to you in yeah, or tune. I think 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.639 it might be tuned because it was it's short for 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.840 um tune conform. It's got a it's a German word 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:10.720 with an oom lot over the oh. So wouldn't it 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.320 be a two? Well, it's like turn trench in form, 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:18.359 tune in form. But I'm gonna call it a ton state. 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:23.560 Uh Okay, So this this ton state or tuned state, 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:27.720 that's how I'm going to say it. Uh. Their metabolism 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.080 solows down to like point zero five percent of its 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.720 normal rate. Right. And there was a researcher in the 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:40.240 forties in Italy who said that she revived a sample 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.600 of tartar grades from a sample of dry moss that 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:47.800 had been collected like a hundred and twenty years before. Well, 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:51.439 apparently no one's ever recreated that one, but they have 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.120 found that a tartar grade can survive in this teen 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:59.879 state for at least thirty two years. Some Japanese researchers 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.119 took moss that was collected from Antarctica in three and 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:08.199 in two thousand and fifteen, they opened up the sample 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:11.000 and where they rehydrated it, and they found that some 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:14.440 tartar grades came alive. It's almost like it freeze, dries 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:18.840 itself and just needs to have, you know, add water. 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.080 And they're like, all right, what what happened over the 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.080 last thirty years? Right exactly? This president The thing is, though, 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:29.560 is if something dries out, it loses it's of its water, 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:34.320 it's moisture from its body. I think, Okay, if something 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.080 drives out like that, like your DNA needs water to 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:41.879 If DNA stays dry, it starts to deteriorate pretty quickly. 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.440 So again, nothing is supposed to be able to survive 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:50.640 thirty years of that state, right. Um, So this has 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:52.840 just got researchers puzzled as well, like how are they 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:57.080 doing this kind of thing? Apparently they have um proteins 0:20:57.119 --> 0:21:01.440 that helped stitch DNA back together, So I guess they 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:03.760 start to come out of the tune state and one 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:05.600 of the first things they do is stitch back this 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.080 their d n A they get up the little sew machine. Yeah, 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.080 well there's this one dude, and we'll take a break 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:16.200 and talk about his a seeming obsession, uh with these 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:39.920 little fellows right after this. Alright, so if you want 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:43.040 to know everything, you want, need to know about a 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:47.120 charter grade, you should sit down and have coffee with 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:52.800 unc Chapel Hill Coatar. Heels uh with this? Is he 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:58.520 a professor? He's just he's a prof Thomas Boothby. This 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:02.480 dude seems like he go to like every article I 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:07.480 read featured him as the main uh Interviewee. Well, he 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:11.920 likes to talk tartar grade. He does. He has a 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:13.800 button that he wears all the time. Said, asked me 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:17.600 about tartar grade. People like what, Uh so, Yeah, I don't, 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:19.480 I don't. I'm sure it's not an obsession. But he 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:23.360 is stricken with him as I am. And Um, he's 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:27.280 trying to figure out like how and why they're able 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:31.720 to do all these amazing things. Um, probably more on 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:35.320 the how than the why. He's why. He seems to 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:37.320 do a lot of I don't know. He leaves that 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:42.800 to the philosophy professors. Yeah, exactly so what Thomas Boothby 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:44.840 made his name not in the way that he would 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.960 necessarily like when he was leading a team I think 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:54.080 in two thousand fourteen, maybe maybe two fift that that 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:57.960 did a genetic scan of a species of water bears 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:02.119 and found some really surprising results, Right, they found that 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:08.480 something like seventeen percent and change of genes in the 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:15.240 water bears were associated with other things like fungi, bacteria, viruses, 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:19.200 that they had all these DNA stitched up with theirs, 0:23:19.720 --> 0:23:22.600 and that the the assumption was that that was how 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.080 the Tarte grades were able to do all these amazing 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:28.800 things and survive in all these ways because they were 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:34.159 borrowing talents and traits and characteristics of unicellular life and 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:38.200 non living life like viruses, and that that's how they 0:23:38.200 --> 0:23:43.480 were able to to survive these extreme conditions. Yeah, but 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:48.200 it's uh, the kind of ended up being a watch. 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:50.880 Like he got really excited and thought, oh my gosh, 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:52.840 they've got all this stuff, but it turns out they 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:57.719 were just contaminated through poor experimentation. They they assumed that 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:00.720 there was lateral gene transfer that was going on. It 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:03.920 turns out that yeah, they had a contaminated sample. And 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:06.760 hats off to Thomas S. Boothby because he's not like, Okay, 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:09.960 I'm gonna go hide for the next decade like he's 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:13.360 he was like, Hey, it happens. It's science, man. We've 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:18.240 gotten increasingly sophisticated machines and the increasingly sophisticated machines found 0:24:18.240 --> 0:24:20.840 that our sample is contaminated. Let's get back to work. 0:24:21.480 --> 0:24:24.879 So the Japanese researchers that follow up on a different 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:28.520 type of tarted grade one of the hardiest around um 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:35.960 Resuma tourists pantasma. Basically, I was hoping that's what it was, 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:42.040 but it was like ramas odious, very natus. Here it 0:24:42.119 --> 0:24:46.120 comes this, uh, and that's one of the hardiest of all. 0:24:46.160 --> 0:24:49.800 It's a land species. Um, the land are much more hardier. 0:24:49.840 --> 0:24:52.040 I think we already said that, right, And well there's 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.679 your why, Chuck that one of the reasons why these 0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:59.720 the land um species have have evolved is because they 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:02.960 have too They don't have these stable conditions that the 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:07.040 marine and aquatic ones do. Right. Yeah, So, um, they 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:12.760 tested the res ramas odious are very an odous species, 0:25:13.160 --> 0:25:16.000 and they found that they had about one percent of 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:20.600 foreign genes involved in them, which is about normal because 0:25:20.640 --> 0:25:23.800 lateral gene transfer can happen at that rate. It's just 0:25:23.840 --> 0:25:27.640 sort of average. All right. So, like you said, he 0:25:27.640 --> 0:25:30.400 held us head high and said, all right, no big deal. 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:32.560 We're going to continue to search for the reasons why 0:25:32.600 --> 0:25:35.480 these little dudes are so hardy. One of the things 0:25:35.520 --> 0:25:39.240 that they found that was pretty unique is um ice 0:25:39.520 --> 0:25:41.320 is a big deal. And we talked a little bit 0:25:41.400 --> 0:25:44.280 a few minutes ago harkening back to the frost bite 0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:47.679 where ice crystals form inside a cell, tearing apart that DNA. 0:25:48.000 --> 0:25:50.600