Pages

Thursday 4 April 2013

The immortal jellyfish: Turritopsis dohrnii


This jellyfish is the only animal that we know of that can reverting back to a younger stage of its life cycle, it dose this when it is facing starvation or other stresses in its environment. To reverse the aging cycle the Turritopsis dohrnii will change back to the polyp stage of it's life cycle from here it can grow more cells and continue life as normal. Although they can be killed through infection, disease of if they get eaten.

Transdifferentiation plays a big role in this because every cell can be changed into other cells for example a lung cell could be recycled into a skin cell. This isn't unique to the Turritopsis dohrnii because if you take a lens out of a chicken the iris will turn into lens cells. 
This extraordinary specie of jelly fish is extremely important to scientists because they are always looking to reasearch new ways to regenerate tissues in the body.

No comments:

Post a Comment