Scientists revive worm frozen for 46,000 years in Siberian permafrost

A worm, which was frozen 46,000 years ago when woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and giant elks were found on the Earth, has been revived by scientists.

The roundworm, which is of a previously unknown species, was in a dormant state, called cryptobiosis, 40 meters (131.2 feet) below the surface in the Siberian permafrost, according to professor emeritus at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden as well as a scientist involved in the research.

Organisms, when in a cryptobiotic state, are able to endure the complete absence of water or oxygen and survive high or freezing temperatures as well as extremely salty conditions. Kurzchalia explained that the organisms remain in a state “between death and life,” in which there is a decrease in their metabolic rates to an undetectable level.

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“One can halt life and then start it from the beginning. This a major finding,” he stated, further adding that other organisms, who were earlier revived from this state, had survived for decades rather than millennia.

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Worms discovered five years ago inSiberian permafrost

Scientists from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia five years ago discovered two roundworm species in the Siberian permafrost.

Researcher Anastasia Shatilovich was able to revive two of the worms at the institute by simply rehydrating them with water and then took around 100 worms for further analysis to labs in Germany by transporting them in her pocket.

Researchers further discovered that P. kolymaenis shared “a molecular toolkit” with C. Elegans, which is another organism often used in scientific studies which could allow it to survive cryptobiosis.

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The two organisms produce a sugar called trehalose which is likely to enable them to endure freezing and dehydration.

“To see that the same biochemical pathway is used in a species which is 200, 300 million years away, that’s really striking,” stated Philipp Schiffer, research group leader of the Institute of Zoology at the University of Cologne. “It means that some processes in evolution are deeply conserved,” he added.

Schiffer added that there are actionable insights which the experts can glean by studying these organisms. “By looking at and analysing these animals, we can maybe inform conservation biology, or maybe even develop efforts to protect other species, or at least learn what to do to protect them in these extreme conditions that we have now,” he said to CNN.

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