Tardigrades Survived 10 Days in Space. Here’s How

Tardigrades, the tiny water bears, survived 10 days exposed to open space in 2007. Here's how they survive almost anything: cryptobiosis, glass-forming proteins and Dsup, the protein that shields their DNA. And why they are not actually indestructible. Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:04 Meet the water bear 2:29 Life on pause 4:09 The stress tests 6:33 How they do it 8:45 Not invincible 9:38 The real reason In this video: what tardigrades are and where they live, how the tun state (cryptobiosis) puts life on pause, the experiments that froze, crushed, irradiated and launched them into orbit, the proteins that turn their cells into glass, the Dsup protein that protected human cells from X-rays, the Beresheet Moon crash, and the real reason they evolved all this. Key sources: Jönsson et al. (2008), Current Biology: tardigrades survive exposure to space in low Earth orbit (FOTON-M3) Tsujimoto et al. (2016), Cryobiology: tardigrades revived after more than 30 years frozen Seki & Toyoshima (1998), Nature: tardigrades survive 600 MPa of pressure Horikawa et al. (2006), International Journal of Radiation Biology: radiation tolerance Hashimoto et al. (2016), Nature Communications: the Dsup protein Boothby et al. (2017), Molecular Cell: tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins Neves et al. (2020), Scientific Reports: heat is the tardigrade's weak spot Traspas & Burchell (2021), Astrobiology: tardigrade impact survival and the Beresheet crash #tardigrades #science #space Image credits DSparrow14, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ta... Gigantic jet photographed by Nichole Ayers on the International Space Station, some edits.jpg (Public domain), Wikimedia Commons Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012), CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SE... Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ca... Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012), CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SE... amanderson2, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mo... Cory Doctorow aka gruntzoki on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Li... Олег Волошин, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D... Georg Mayer, Christine Martin, Jan Rüdiger et al., CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ta... Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ba... TaBaZzz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Be... Turritopsisdohrnii.jpeg (CC0), Wikimedia Commons