#Turritopsis nutricula

[cypherdecypher]

Animal of the Day!

Turritopsis nutricula (Turritopsis nutricula)

(Photo from Penn State)

Conservation Status- Unlisted

Habitat- Atlantic Ocean; Indo-Pacific Ocean; Caribbean Sea

Size (Weight/Length)- 5 mm

Diet- Plankton; Fish eggs

Cool Facts- Dubbed the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula can reverse its aging and, in theory, never die due to old age. Once sexually mature, they can change their cells to revert to a juvenile state. The changes in its cells can be observed in their digestive tract and their outer umbrella. These deep sea jellies are rarely ever seen outside of cameras on oil rigs and oceanic drone exploration. However, these jellies are still threatened by a multitude of predators and ocean pollution. Through observation of their cells, medical institutes are hoping that the way the immortal jellyfish de-ages its cells will give us insight on a possible cure for cancer and even reverse aging in humans.

Rating- 12/10 (Honestly, just ridiculously cool.)

[despertarsabiendo]

¿Te imaginas rejuvenecer las veces que quieras y no morir jamás? Hay un animal que lo hace: La Turritopsis Nutricula, el animal inmortal.

[hinge]

Hinge presents an anthology of love stories almost never told. Read more on https://no-ordinary-love.co

[memosminifridge]

and all im gonna say is. just because some immortal creatures..... have to go thru a larval stage every 100 years... i guess that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to have relationships with other immortal creatures... and that's all i really want to think about that right now 🙃

[ozkar-krapo]

V/A

"Polaroids & Music Cassettes [Turritopsis nutricula (for 35mm Dia Slides)]"

(LP. Psych.KG. 2018) [DE/US/CH/FR]

[jrenvs3000w25]

Blog 9 - Immortality in Nature 🪼 (sort of)

For this week’s blog prompt, I’m going to interpret the coolest thing I know about nature for you guys.

I’ve always loved the ocean, but my fascination with aquatic invertebrates began in some of my zoology courses here at Guelph (ZOO2700 and ZOO3700 specifically).

What if I told you there’s an immortal jellyfish?… let’s get into this

Imagine a creature that can cheat death. Instead of aging, it simply starts life over again. It sounds like something from science fiction, I know. But it’s real! Deep in the ocean, a tiny jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii (otherwise known as the immortal jellyfish) has mastered biological immortality.

This jellyfish is no larger than your pinky nail, and has a life cycle unlike any other known animal. Most jellyfish begin life as free-swimming larvae, settle onto the ocean floor, and grow into polyps that eventually release mature, adult jellyfish called ‘medusae’. Normally, once a jellyfish reaches adulthood it reproduces and eventually dies. But Turritopsis dohrnii has a trick up its tentacles (lol) it can reverse its life cycle (Piraino et al., 1996).

When faced with stress, injury, or even starvation, this jellyfish just won’t die. Instead, it transforms its adult cells back into a polyp, essentially rewinding time and starting its life anew (Schmich et al., 2007). Imagine if instead of growing old, humans could revert to being a baby and begin life again. It’s like the ultimate reset button.

The secret behind this incredible ability lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where specialized cells revert to a more basic state and then develop into entirely different types of cells (Bavestrello et al., 1992). It’d be like if your skin cells could suddenly turn into heart cells, or if an entire adult organism could return to an embryonic stage. While some other animals like salamanders that regrow limbs have limited regenerative abilities, Turritopsis dohrnii is the only known animal actually capable of completely restarting its life cycle indefinitely.

Does this mean the immortal jellyfish is truly immortal? In theory, yes. If conditions are right, it could technically keep repeating this cycle forever. But in the wild, Turritopsis dohrnii still faces obvious dangers like predation, disease, or poor environmental conditions that can ultimately end its life. Even still, its ability to escape aging has made it the focus of some scientific research, with scientists hoping to unlock insights into human aging and regenerative medicine. How cool.

So the next time you think about eternal youth, remember that nature may have already figured it out, in the form of a tiny jellyfish drifting through the ocean.

The Immortal Jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii). Photo from the American Museum of Natural History by Takashi Murai. https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/immortal-jellyfish.

Sources

Bavestrello, G., Sommer, C. (1992). Bi-directional conversion in Turritopsis nutricula (Hydrozoa). Research Gate. Scientia Marina 56(2-3):137-140. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286456401_Bi-directional_conversion_in_Turritopsis_nutricula_Hydrozoa

Piraino S, Boero F, Aeschbach B, Schmid V. Reversing the Life Cycle: Medusae Transforming into Polyps and Cell Transdifferentiation in Turritopsis nutricula (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa). Biol Bull. 1996 Jun;190(3):302-312. doi: 10.2307/1543022. PMID: 29227703. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29227703/

Schmich J, Kraus Y, De Vito D, Graziussi D, Boero F, Piraino S. Induction of reverse development in two marine Hydrozoans. Int J Dev Biol. 2007;51(1):45-56. doi: 10.1387/ijdb.062152js. PMID: 17183464. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17183464/

[tongue-twists]

Fursona

Easy mode: Capybara

Medium mode: Pink Fairy Armadillo

Hard mode: Turritopsis nutricula

accuracy of assigned fursona:

- 6/10 not mischievous enough

- 8/10 yeah

- 6/10 I like

[hinge]

Hinge presents an anthology of love stories almost never told. Read more on https://no-ordinary-love.co

[lupinus-bicolor]

What I wouldn't give to watch Aihvhia perform Turritopsis Nutricula live...... I would die happy honestly

[sinophone-net-art]

Title: Gfwlist 《長城長》 Year: 2010 URL: N/A [N/A] Format: Installation comprises of stainless steel, thermal printer module, thermal paper and the prohibited list of websites from the Great Fire Wall Themes: Censorship. State of Surveillance. "Great firewall". Encryption. Lists of websites.

Artist(s): aaajiao (Wenkai Xu 徐文愷) City/Country: Xi'an/Shanghai/Berlin

Note: The artist created Cloud Data (2009) and Turritopsis Nutricula (2010), which are now revitalized through URLs on the Internet in his retrospective exhibition in 2020. Since these two works are initially presented in installation, and their core technological feature is algorithm generation, they are not included in this phase.

More about:

aaajiao (Wenkai Xu). Gfwlist. Accessed December 1, 2023. https://eventstructure.com/filter/2010/Gfwlist

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. "GFWlist (2010)." Video documentary of artworks. Accessed December 1, 2023. https://zkm.de/en/media/video/gfwlist-2010

[animalsadviseus]

Primordial Jellyfish

The Inimitable Jellyfish

#animalsadviseus

#seacreature

#

Jellyfish seem to exist in a world without gravity and where everything is happening in slow motion. Serenely guided by the movements of the water, sometimes these solitary drifters accidentally end up in clusters due to water conditions. Being among some of the world’s deadliest venomous creatures along with living a go-with-the-flow lifestyle has made their simplicity into their greatest evolutionary strength. A group of jellyfish swimming together can be referred to as a “bloom” which implies a collaboratively moving flowering garden. These magnificent ancients have been around for more than 500 million years, and exhibit a compelling contrast between their evolutionary hardiness and fragile weightless diaphanous appearance. Where are you keeping things simple and reliable for yourself? What currents are you floating along on, and have any unfortunate passerby organisms been entangled in your tentacles? Where are the currents taking you these days?

At least one species of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, may be able to cheat death. When threatened, this species is capable of undergoing cellular transdifferentiation, a process whereby the organism's cells essentially become new again.

This jellyfish is colloquially called the "immortal" jellyfish and it inhabits the warm waters of the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Its unique transdifferentiation ability is a major subject of research, as it could help the medical field understand how to turn cancerous cells into noncancerous cells like muscles, nerves, or skin.

[afactaday]

#aFactADay2023

#906: you've probably heard of the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii (formerly T. nutricula). it's able to escape natural death by reversing its life cycle, transforming from the medusa back to the polyp, escaping the usual death that post-reproduction medusae suffer. this is known as "ontogeny reversal". it's the first animal known to be able to revert to a juvenile morph after achieving sexual maturity. however, so far this has only been observed in the lab. the observed triggers for it were a change in temperature, a change in salinity, starvation or "mechanical damage" (which i think is ScienceSpeak for "we poked it with a pair of tweezers").

[fyeah-seacreatures-blog]

Immortal Jellyfish. By: h16nakaji

Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of trans-differentiation. Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish "alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell". In this process the medusa of the immortal jellyfish is transformed into the polyps of a new polyp colony. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal. 

[alientechnology00]

This jellyfish (Turritopsis Nutricula) can, as an adult, revert back to the polyp stage.

From there, it continues a conventional lifecycle, maturing and mating.

Instead of dying, the immortal jelly reverts, time and again, back into the polyp colony. That ability allows the jellyfish to bypass death, rendering it biologically immortal!

[animalworld]

IMMORTAL JELLYFISH — request from elocinbored Turritopsis nutricula ©Cibermitanios.com.ar

Turritopsis nutricula, the potentially immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose  jellyfish form can revert back to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity.

It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.

Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish "alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell". In this process the mature jellyfish transforms back into the polyps stage creating a new polyp colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal, although in nature, most Turritopsis, like other medusae, are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the plankton stage, without reverting to the polyp form.

No single specimen has been observed for any extended period, so it is not currently possible to estimate the age of an individual, and so even if this species has the potential for immortality, there is no laboratory evidence of many generations surviving from any individual.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

Other posts:

Purple Striped Jelly

Australian Spotted Jelly

Blood-Red Jelly

[mirkokosmos]

Turritopsis Nutricula Immortal Jellyfish

[c7-shiina]

●虚無

SM（277×158mm）

2014

[hinge]

Hinge presents an anthology of love stories almost never told. Read more on https://no-ordinary-love.co

[mindblowingfactz]

A jellyfish called Turritopsis Nutricula can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. In other words, it is biologically immortal and can live forever. source

image via bbc