Functions of Life | Nematodes found in Siberia may be 46,000 years old, scientists believe

If your naps have sometimes stretched longer than planned, you can take solace in the fact that you are not a Siberian nematode after all.

In 2018, the worms thawed from hibernation in the permafrost have turned out to be 46,000 years old, believe the researchers who examined them. The results were published by a scientific journal PLoS Genetics.

If if the timing turns out to be right, sub-millimeter worms would be the most extreme known example of how hibernating organisms are able to survive when they slow down their vital functions in difficult conditions.

Worms the radiocarbon dating that revealed the age was not made directly from the worms themselves, but from the biological material that surrounded them in the permafrost.

“The timing is really precise,” says the second author of the study. cell biologist emeritus Teymuras Kurzchalia, for Scientific American. He works at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden.

All are not convinced of the result. Biologist interviewed by Scientific American Byron Adams says he believes the fused worms are very old, but he still doesn’t see the analysis confirming that.

“The research does not succeed in justifying that the biological material that was timed could not have been just surface dirt.”

According to Adams, the research needs more information, for example, about the current nematode populations in the area where the worms were found. It would ensure that the resurrected worms are of a different species than the current ones.

Now investigated P. kolymaensis –nematodes were collected during excavations in 2002 and thawed in 2018.

The study also tested the method by which the researchers made nematodes both hibernate and wake up from hibernation.

The researchers also showed through genetic analysis that the sugar utilization mechanism used by nematodes during hibernation was similar In P. kolymaensis and in current nematodes.