‘Time-travelling’ jellyfish found to age backwards in accidental discovery

Most living creatures are bound by the fact of birth, aging and death. However, few have evolved to break the typical life cycle.

The aptly named immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) is one such animal—and, in a surprising discovery now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have added its cousin, the comb jellyfish (Mnemiopsis leidyi) , in the coveted youth. the club.

Researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway realized they had a de-aging specimen in their lab when they found a larval ctenophore in a tank that was supposed to be a mature jellyfish.

The serendipitous finding raises the question of how many other animals can age in reverse.

“The work challenges our understanding of early animal development and body plans, opening new avenues for the study of plasticity and life cycle renewal. “The fact that we have found a new species that uses this particular ‘time travel machine’ raises fascinating questions about how widespread this capacity is in the animal tree of life,” study co-author Joan J. Soto said in a statement. -Angel via Phys.org.

Soto-Angel and her team conducted experiments in an attempt to recreate the circumstances that prompted the comb jellyfish to return to its origins, identifying extreme stress as the trigger.

“Witnessing how they slowly transition into a typical cypidid larva as if they were going back in time was just fascinating,” Soto-Angel said. “Over several weeks, they not only reshaped their morphological features, but also had a completely different feeding behavior, typical of a cypidid larva.”

Previous research suggests that the comb jellyfish may have been the first animal species to appear on Earth 700 million years ago and may owe its longevity to their ability to alter growth and development.

“This is a very exciting time for us,” said Paul Burkhardt, who co-authored the study. “This fascinating find will open the door to many important discoveries. It will be interesting to discover the molecular mechanism that drives the reverse development and what happens to the animal’s neural network during this process.”

In the future, similar findings may lead scientists to understand how humans, too, can harness the aging process.