When you look in the mirror and wish you were ten years older, what you are really asking for is to reverse, or reverse, aging. While most animals, including humans, are born, grow old, and eventually die, some species can break from this traditional life cycle: they seem to defy old age and revert to younger versions of themselves.
Perennial Turritopsisthe so-called immortal jellyfish, is the most well-known such species. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, revealed a new member of this special group with amazing abilities: the ctenophore. Mnemiopsis leidyialso called comb jelly. Now, scientists are wondering how many other “time-traveling” species there might actually be.
“This work challenges our understanding of early animal development and body systems, opening up new ways to study life cycle plasticity and regeneration. The fact that we found a new species that uses this unusual ‘time machine’ raises interesting questions about how this ability spreads in the animal tree of life,” Joan J. Soto-Angel, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of. Bergen, who co-authored the study, said in a statement.
An unintended finding is at the heart of this study. Soto-Angel began investigating this topic after a larval ctenophore suddenly appeared in an adult ctenophore in a tank in his lab. However, as it turned out, it was the same person. Soto-Angel and his colleagues therefore set out to try to reproduce the condition that could cause developmental regression and discovered that the adult ctenophore can, in fact, revert to the larval stage when faced with severe stress.
“Seeing how they slowly transitioned into a normal larva as if they were going back, was amazing,” explained Soto-Angel. A few weeks ago, they not only changed their morphological characteristics, but also had a completely different feeding behavior, similar to a cydippid caterpillar.
Comb jellies are ancient animals—in fact, some research suggests they may have been the first animal to ever exist, emerging about 700 million years ago—leading researchers to suggest that evolutionary regression may have been the first ability.
“This is a very exciting time for us,” said Paul Burkhardt, a University of Bergen researcher who co-authored the study, in a statement. “This interesting discovery will open the door to many important discoveries. It will be interesting to reveal the molecular mechanism that drives regression, and what happens to the animal’s neural network during this process.”
The two researchers suggest that life cycle plasticity—the ability of organisms to change aspects of their biology when they encounter certain environmental stimuli—might be more prevalent among animals than scientists realize, according to the statement. As for people, unfortunately, all the creams and products in the world have not achieved such anti-aging results. However, future research in the biology of development and aging now has a new example in the animal kingdom to draw inspiration from.
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