Adopting Foreign DNA

29 May 2008

 Lets say you take a dictionary and leave it outside all winter. Throughout the snow and melt, freeze and thaw, the pages start falling apart and eventually are spread all over your lawn. When spring comes you notice something strange. The warmer days cause the pages to start moving toward its original location and eventually the entire dictionary is put back together by itself. Does that sound plausible? Is it possible for that to happen all by itself?

 In fresh water ponds and other areas are creatures called bdelloids. These small animals have recently gotten some press because they are finding DNA from other creatures or even plants have some how gotten into their genome. Bdelloids are incredibly adapted to their environment. When the water drys up they dry up too and this causes their bodies to explode open and their innards are exposed months or years at a time. When the water returns they have the ability to reassemble themselves back to full functionality.

 How does this ability evolve?

 For millions of years when the water dried up they all died, until one of them eventually evolved the ability to pull itself back together?

 Bdelloids can not only revive their own life but one of them can also reproduce all by itself. Only 1% of the genome has been analyzed but it is obvious that they have been designed to survive almost any situation.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/32716/title/Not_so_prudish_after_all