The secret of the tardigrade – aka moss moss, aka water bear – is one step closer to solving. Scientists studying the DNA of microscopic animals say the complex, multi-legged creatures could be far apart with nematodes and “other worms.” The researchers published their findings. out in the magazine Biology PLOS.
Tardigrades are some of the strangest, most badass organs on Earth. Don’t be bothered by their small size – these animals are a small thing. They can survive in the most brutal conditions, from lack of water and hunger to scorching heat, cold weather, intense radiation, and even empty space.
How they draw from this invisibility is, naturally, a question of interest among biologists (and to Mental Floss – links to our many articles about these amazing creatures can be found throughout This story).
The authors of one study in 2015 made headlines when they announced that one-sixth of the tardigrade’s genetic blue plan was inherited from bacteria and other organisms. This horizontal gene mutation (HGT) is not uncommon in nature, but other tardigrade experts, including a team at the University of Edinburgh, felt that there was a suspiciously high probability of 17.5 per cent, even for maverick as the tardigrade.
The suspicious people were right. Further examination of the tardigrade genome confirmed the presence of several genes translocated horizontally. Just a few.
HGT to one side, there is still plenty to be found in the tardigrade genes. Tardigrades have been tardigrades for hundreds of millions of years. There are no fossils left from their early days to tell us what they used to be. We don’t know for sure where they came from, how we talk about them, or who they are.
To find out, Edinburgh researcher Mark Blaxter and his colleagues selected the genomes of two tardigrade species, Ramazzottius varieornatus and Hypsibius dujardini. They found something unexpected: The armed, multi-legged tardigrades looked closer to worms than to insects.
If these conclusions are correct, Blaxter told Mental Floss in an email, they challenge the true structure of the Panarthropoda a family tree, which assumes that “the leggy beetles are in a closer relationship with each other than they are to worms such as nematodes. “
But he realizes that there is a lot more research to be done before you can embark on that challenge: “We have only looked at very few of the 10 million or more species on Earth. There will be something interesting in it. all new entities, and probably all genders, we have never seen before, and we never thought. “