Frozen 'Water Bears' Revived, Reproduce After 31 Years (VIDEO)

Tardigrades, known as "water bears" are able to perform a temporary shutdown of their metabolic activities, called cryptobiosis, when they are either frozen or desiccated. The longest any water bears had been held in this state in long-term storage was eight years frozen and nine years in dry storage. However, the Research Organization of Information and Systems recently thawed and recovered two individuals and an egg that had been frozen for 32 years, according to a news release.

When it comes to cryptobiotic microscopic animals, the primary focus is survival, while recovery and reproductive abilities afterward are often left unobserved. In this study, the researchers examined the two tardigrades and the egg, recovered from Antarctica in November 1983, after thawing them out in May 2014.

They were thawed at at 3º C for a 24-hour period and then soaked in water for an additional 24 hours. After that 48-hour time frame, they were provided with algae as food. One of the individuals moved slightly after the first re-hydration day, wiggling its fourth pair of legs. After two weeks, the water bear was crawling and eating again. The second individual, despite moving slightly early on and recovering, died 20 days after re-hydration.

Of the two revived individuals, the survived one, along with the juvenile in the frozen egg, reproduced successfully after being thawed out.

The individual laid 19 eggs, with 14 of them hatching successfully. Interestingly, the eggs of that individual took almost double the normal time to hatch, opening in 19 days, compared to the average of 9.5 days. The juvenile grew and laid 15 of its own eggs, 7 of which hatched.

The researchers noted that despite the possible damage to the individual from being frozen for 31 years displayed by the exaggerated hatch time of its eggs, the juvenile revived and hatched from the egg showed no signs of obvious damages or negative effects.

 "Our team now aims at unraveling the mechanisms underlying the long-term survival of cryptobiotic organisms by studying damage to tardigrades' DNA and their ability to repair it," said Megumu Tsujimoto, the lead researcher at National Institute of Polar Research.

Tardigrades reside in water and are eight-legged and have segmented bodies. They were first discovered by Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773.

Watch the study's process below, via the Daily Mail.

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