No other animal is known to use the tardigrade strategy to survive desiccation.
Tiny tardigrades can survive conditions that would kill most other forms of life. By expelling their body's water and transforming into a seemingly lifeless ball called a tun, they enter a state of dried-up suspended animation in which they can survive for decades without food and water and withstand extreme temperatures, pressures and even the vacuum of space.
In fact,"no such proteins have been reported in other desiccation-tolerant organisms," said Takekazu Kunieda, a biologist at the University of Tokyo who led the new research, published Sept. 6 in the journal PLOS Biology . Scientists have long been interested in how tardigrades do this. Many animals that can survive long periods of desiccation, such as aquatic crustaceans known as brine shrimp, use sugars called trehalose to essentially freeze their cells in a glass-like state that protects their inner workings until the animals are exposed to water again.
Cooperative proteins Kunieda and his team ended up circling back to CAHS proteins while looking for tardigrade proteins that changed form upon stress. They identified more than 300, and CAHS proteins were among them.
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