Diffusion Science radio: Tardigrades to the Moon!

Tardigrades to the Moon!


MP3
A deep dive into the science of tardigrades - the tiny water bears or moss piglets that can withstand extremes of cold, heat, dryness, pressure, and vacuum, by going into suspended animation and then revitalising when its safe again - from whom we can learn ways to improve our own health. We fired them out of guns, and sent them to the Moon!
Produced and hosted by Ian Woolf

A plush tardigrade toy holding a microphoneA realistic tardigrade holding a microphone

How the secrets of the ‘water bear’ could improve lifesaving drugs like insulin
Tardigrades (Water Bears)
Why are tardigrades, those chubby little water bears, nearly indestructible?
Adorable tardigrades fight UV rays with glowing shield
Naturally occurring fluorescence protects the eutardigrade Paramacrobiotus sp. from ultraviolet radiation - Biology Letters
Life as a Tardigrade
Seven Things Everyone Should Know about . . . Tardigrades
The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events - Nature
Ultrastructural analysis of the dehydrated tardigrade Hypsibius exemplaris unveils an anhydrobiotic-specific architecture
Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation
Tardigrades survive exposure to space in low Earth orbit
Tardigrades - American Scientist
Everything You (Didn’t) Need To Know About Water Bears
Tiny tardigrades walk like insects 500,000 times their size
Also: the controversial claim of a frozen water bear achieving quantum entangled state

Entanglement between superconducting qubits and a tardigrade
8 Reasons Why We Love Tardigrades
Recovery and reproduction of an Antarctic tardigrade retrieved from a moss sample frozen for over 30 years
Water Bears Are the Master DNA Thieves of the Animal World
Evidence for extensive horizontal gene transfer from the draft genome of a tardigrade
Tardigrade-Tough Applications for Humans
Slowing Biological Time to Extend the Golden Hour for Lifesaving Treatment
The tardigrade damage suppressor protein binds to nucleosomes and protects DNA from hydroxyl radicals
Application of CRISPR/Cas9 system and the preferred no-indel end-joining repair in tardigrades
Radiation Tolerance in Tardigrades: Current Knowledge and Potential Applications in Medicine
The toughest animals of the Earth versus global warming: Effects of long-term experimental warming on tardigrade community structure of a temperate deciduous forest
Tardigrades in space
How the secrets of the ‘water bear’ could improve lifesaving drugs like insulin

Natural and Designed Proteins Inspired by Extremotolerant
Organisms Can Form Condensates and Attenuate Apoptosis in Human Cells





November 21, 2022
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