It can survive drying out, extreme heat and cold, and even exposure to vacuum. The humble tardigrade can be found practically anywhere there’s enough water for it to live, and quite a few places there isn’t. This weird, ugly-cute little guy’s secret comes down to chemistry.
Sources:
- Tardigrades turn into glass to survive complete dehydration
- The Secret of the Crazy-Tough Water Bear, Finally Revealed
- How a Water Bear Survives, Even When It’s Dry
- Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation
- Intracellular Organic Osmolytes: Function and Regulation*
- Trehalose and anhydrobiosis in tardigrades--evidence for divergence in responses to dehydration.
- Trehalose in Three Species of De siccation Tolerant Tardigrades
- Tardigrada, moss piglet, water bear
- BIOLOGICAL GLASS: A STRATEGY TO SURVIVE DESICCATION AND HEAT
- Tardigrades and anhydrobiosis Water bears
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