Protect our seas
Myblue4you partner of the Mareazul Foundation - Protect our seas
We at Myblue4you are very sensitive to the theme of marine attention. We try to convey to our guests, during the Myblue4you sailing holidays, information on the maritime universe and its oddities and how to protect our seas. For this in our blog you will find various curious articles on the aquatic life of the seas. The secret of the immortal jellyfish, the longest lived animal on Earth Turritopsis Nutricula is a tiny jellyfish capable of rejuvenating and turning back her biological clock. Some specimens have existed for over 60 million years.
The search for immortality has always fascinated scholars, alchemists and philosophers, who over the centuries have tried to discover the secret of eternal life where religion cannot – and perhaps does not want to – reach. If on the spiritual level it is faith that guides believers towards an afterlife, science makesrigorous observation of nature its modus operandi, to pursue what for many is only a painful chimera.
The Turritopsis Nutricula
The immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis Nutricula, was discovered a few years ago by researchers from the University of Lecce. Its prerogative depends on the fact that it is able to reverse its biological cycle and thus escape death.
Small in size, with a diameter of just 4 millimeters, it develops following two phases: in the first it is similar to a small octopus, it is in fact equipped with tentacles useful for underwater hunting, in the second it transforms into a jellyfish, with the development of more tentacles (ranges from ten to over 80). Once it reaches sexual maturity and reproduces, it does not die. It descends to the bottom of the sea and returns to the juvenile stage from which it had developed.
For scientists, this rejuvenation is made possible at the cellular level by a phenomenon known as “transdifferentiation”. The change is due to the action of cells that from highly specialized are transformed back into non-specialized cells, typical of the juvenile phase. Cells, such as muscle cells, which are able to lose their morphological specialization and return to a totipotent stage through which new cells with different characteristics can be produced. What makes this jellyfish special, however, is not the cells in and of themselves, but the process that turns the biological clock back.
The search for immortality has always fascinated scholars, alchemists and philosophers, who over the centuries have tried to discover the secret of eternal life where religion cannot – and perhaps does not want to – reach. If on the spiritual level it is faith that guides believers towards an afterlife, science makesrigorous observation of nature its modus operandi, to pursue what for many is only a painful chimera.
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