
Worms frozen in permafrost for up to 42,000 years come back to life - keeler
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/worms-frozen-in-permafrost-for-up-to-42000-years-come-back-to-life/
======
marzell
For anyone wondering about previous precedents for reviving frozen
multicellular creatures, here's my response to a now-deleted comment:

There are shorter-term examples of frogs [0] (up to a few years) and
tardigrades [1] (30 years) but I haven't heard of anything on this timescale
before.

[0][http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-
alaskan-...](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-
frozen-frogs-20140723-story.html)

[1][https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10785002/water-bear-
tardi...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10785002/water-bear-tardigrade-
frozen-30-years-reproduction)

Edit: formatting

~~~
prolikewh0a
Tardigrades are hardcore.

From Wikipedia: Tardigrades are considered to be able to survive even complete
global mass extinction events due to astrophysical events, such as gamma-ray
bursts, or large meteorite impacts. Some of them can withstand extremely cold
temperatures down to 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero), while
others can withstand extremely hot temperatures up to 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C)
for several minutes, pressures about six times greater than those found in the
deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher
than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go
without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where
they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.
Tardigrades that live in harsh conditions undergo an annual process of
cyclomorphosis, allowing for survival in sub-zero temperatures.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade)

~~~
singularity2001
Unscientific trope of pure love: In German they are called Bärtierchen (lose
translation: bear-thingies) whose name and appearance is reminiscent of gummy-
bears.

~~~
larrykwg
translates more like "bear animal" actually

~~~
scandox
Tierchen is surely cuter than just Animal? Like maybe like critter or beastie?

~~~
zaarn
Yes.

"Tier" would be an animal of sorts. "chen" is a common suffix for cutiefying
something or indicate it's small (and adorable).

"Tierchen" would be a cute animal, usually a small one too.

The suffixes "-lein" und "-erl" function similarly but have been largely
replaced in common german (though in southern germany, both are alive and
well)

~~~
pavel_lishin
I assuem that's the "-lein" in "Fraulein"? Is "-erl" the masculine version?

~~~
blensor
Hmm, interesting to try and pinpoint the difference between "lein" and "erl".
I would say they are both diminutive but not exactly in the same way.

erl ... would be more related to the actual size

    
    
      Sack -> Sackerl (bag -> small bag)
      Wagen -> Wagerl (cart -> small cart)
    

lein ... would be more related to the inner size (sorry I can't frame this
into words any better)

    
    
      Frau -> Fräulein (Woman -> Younger/Fragile woman (unmarried))
      Wagen -> Wäglein (Cart -> smaller but also lesser cart)
    

edit: referring to the answer of pavel_lishin. Yes "qualitative" modifier was
the word I am looking for.

~~~
pavel_lishin
"erl" seems to be a purely quantitative diminutive, whereas "lein" seems to be
more of a qualitative modifier, I guess?

------
mcv

      > Some 300 prehistoric worms were analysed - and two ‘were shown to contain viable nematodes’.
    

This sounds like 300 non-nematode worms were examined, and two of them
contained viable nematodes as parasites. Is that correct? Because everything
else in the article sounds like the nematodes __are __the worms, rather than
__were in __the worms.

It's a tiny detail, but it's bugging me.

~~~
flashman
Yes, poor article, it's not 300 worms but 300 permafrost samples, of which two
contained an unspecified number of viable nematodes
:[https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1134%2FS00124966180...](https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1134%2FS0012496618030079.pdf)

> We analyzed more than 300 samples of permafrost deposits of different ages
> and origins, buried soils and fossil rodent burrows. Two samples were shown
> to contain viable nematodes.

~~~
pmiller2
It does say “They are both believed to be female,” so, unless it’s a
translation error, it’s referring to 2 worms, not 2 samples.

------
dekhn
Nematodes are funny. I was curious, so I bought a simple inspection microscope
and bought some agar plates with E.Coli on them. You can easily sample
nematodes by cutting up rotting fruit and putting it on the edge of the
plates. the nematodes will cruise out of the fruit and cruise around the
E.Coli eating it, leaving tracks. Then you can make a worm pick, isolate and
clean nematodes, and transfer them to other plates or slides for closer
inspection.

Of all the model organisms, C. Elegans is far and away the most amazing.

------
dmix
Nematodes, which were revived here, were also the first cellular species which
was found to survive deep in the earths crust - in a study which also featured
one of the same Princeton researchers (T. C. Onstott [1]) collaborating with a
different group of international researchers:

> "Nematode found in mine is first subsurface multicellular organism"

> Until now, it was thought that the temperature, energy, oxygen and space
> constraints of the subsurface biosphere were too extreme for multicellular
> organisms. [2]

This is interesting news but I'm curious if this will be largely limited to
this unique type of (multicellular) organism which can survive extreme
conditions?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott)

[2]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obworm.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obworm.html)

------
steve19
EDIT: It's legit. Thanks to the commenter below.

Can anyone in Russia confirm if this is a legit news story? It's being
repeated throughout tabloids in the West all referencing this English language
Siberian publication, as well as hordes of definite news apsm sites, all
appear to be using the same generic images and verbetium or almost verbetium
text.

~~~
trhway
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS001249661803007...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0012496618030079)

the affiliations list top Russian schools as well as Princeton.

~~~
steve19
Thanks. If anyone wants easy access using, uhhh, a friend, here is the DOI

[https://doi.org/10.1134/S0012496618030079](https://doi.org/10.1134/S0012496618030079)

------
xevb3k
I thought the half life of DNA was around 400 years. Anyone know how this is
possible?

~~~
jacquesm
Halflife under normal circumstances. Deepfreezing it is not the usual for DNA.
Just like your meat and vegetables are still edible when you freeze them a
year later and spoil in a matter of hours or days at higher temperatures.

[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10/05/rspb.2012.1745)

So that's at 13.1 degrees, quote from the end of that paper:

"Our results indicate that short fragments of DNA could be present for a very
long time; at –5°C, the model predicts a half-life of 158 000 years for a 30
bp mtDNA fragment in bone (table 1). Even rough estimates such as this imply
that sequenceable bone DNA fragments may still be present more than 1 Myr
after deposition in deep frozen environments. It therefore seems reasonable to
suggest that future research may identify authentic DNA that is significantly
older than the current record of approximately 450–800 kyr from Greenlandic
ice cores".

So even if they don't have a thermal model where you plug in any temperature
and it will give you the half life there is good evidence that lower
temperatures significantly increase the chances of DNA remaining intact for
much longer than the above-zero half life would suggest.

~~~
Alex3917
Since (some) nematodes eat poop, could we get viable megafauna DNA this way?

~~~
amphitoky
just find the poop and get the DNA from there? What does the worm add?

------
okonomiyaki3000
This is great news for everyone on the Paleo Diet.

~~~
pouta
Could you elaborate? How is this finding related?

~~~
ibrault
Paleolithic Era pun maybe? No idea hahah

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I assume it's because now there's literally something for you to eat from the
paleolithic?

------
vadiml
What a shitty reporting: no reporter name, no scientist(s) name. Coming from
the country where secret services are known to fake urine samples from
sportsmen... I wouldn't take it at the face value...

~~~
stronglikedan
What, you don't think anyone would be named "The Siberian Times reporter"?

------
viach
Does it mean there are chances of finding something alive in permafrost on
Mars?

------
i_feel_great
Would these worms have been snap-frozen? I.e., they did not freeze slowly so
that ice crystals did not form in their cells killing them. How would snap
freezing work in these environments.

~~~
dekhn
cryptobiosis. they have the ability to remove the majority of water, which
greatly reduces enzyme activity, and package everything so it stays pretty
stable but reactivates when wetted and warmed.

------
montrose
Does this make these worms the oldest living things?

~~~
tim333
Yes, according to the article.

~~~
Ethcad
No, it said oldest living animals.

~~~
HiBloo
Works are from Animal kingdom. So yeah, the oldest living animal in that way.
Oldest bacteria is over half a million years old.

------
biomcgary
Genome sequencing of the progeny might show mutational biases during the
frozen state (in the gonads, at least). It would probably be necessary to
sequence an extant population to distinguish between population genetic
changes (i.e., evolution) and mutation bias.

------
sAbakumoff
Also, reminds old x-files episode [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(The_X-
Files)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_\(The_X-Files\)) Hope mass rage has
not started yet in Siberia.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Me too, which reminds me, I really need to re-watch all of them one of these
days.

~~~
sAbakumoff
hurry up; don't wait until these worms crawl after you! :-)

------
refractal
[https://mashable.com/2017/12/13/siberian-times-best-
of/#EqTV...](https://mashable.com/2017/12/13/siberian-times-best-
of/#EqTVzwjh7qqQ)

------
cweagans
So these are probably the oldest living organisms in existence then, huh? I'm
not aware of anything that's older than 42000 years, but I'd be amazed to be
wrong :)

~~~
dredmorbius
Spores in amber and salt deposits have been revived after 40 and 240 million
years, respectively.

There are colonial organisms over 40,000 years old.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-
living_organis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-
living_organisms)

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060)

[http://www.extremescience.com/OldestLivingThing.htm](http://www.extremescience.com/OldestLivingThing.htm)

~~~
vkou
There are many reasons to doubt that the '240 million year old bacteria' were
actually 240 million years old.

[https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/18/6/1143/1046940](https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/18/6/1143/1046940)

~~~
dredmorbius
True, though even without those, we're well past 42,000 years.

~~~
vkou
It's not noise, it's contamination with modern bacteria.

~~~
dredmorbius
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060)

Amber. 42mya.

~~~
vkou
Given how many times claims such as these have been brought under question,
and how easy it is to make a mistake in this discipline, a single,
uncorroborated publication is insufficient evidence.

Truly extraordinary claims require truly extraordinary evidence, and this one
smells fishy, too. [1]

> Our interpretation of the phylogenetic tree constructed from 16S rRNA
> sequences (fig. 1b and SI table 3) suggests that isolates 41_AG11AC7 and
> 46_AG11AC9a are likely Staphylococcus species, which are not known to
> sporulate and are also common microorganisms on the human skin.

> The authors also fail to present negative control sequences to confirm that
> the DNA sequences presented within this study are not the results of
> laboratory or reagent contamination, rather than contamination that likely
> occurred in 1995

They didn't even do any control runs to calibrate their experiment! Sounds
like junk science to me.

[1] [https://oup.silverchair-
cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/...](https://oup.silverchair-
cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/Journal/femsle/353/2/10.1111_1574-6968.12415/1/353-2-85.pdf?Expires=2147483647&Signature=KbKl2BeFo8FO3x~sqPvLkTpKLXFs1BR6leKVXdi30bawH
--jRpIUOgIRBqhGYyUym~docz-1ycZajLRY9Z-bh~OCzGb4LAYa1GjWVPbAdk~YkdUFdSH--
rOyTbAquG17IdM1X8dOJhElPgARNF0l-Trl0UHfqVyvuILea-9y-vUi7uiIe~Z03ehXuLvf-
yDSuuLJGEM3cdzIrwMt2RO1-8Ou~1b4z70GllVw9HEHT7zlEiY~v8elYqjNNZxOHTYryV3115EnNgyQqUym0xXrYQ0Fy1gBRmjC8s6JDT9VZO0RV2-AUbsLRHtVXqpH4ihdjcKH8uhl09EEkNBLikSkKg__&Key-
Pair-Id=APKAIE5G5CRDK6RD3PGA)

------
baalimago
What i find most interesting must be how this sort of creature came to be.
It's "evolutionary strategy" must be to simply get frozen, only to get
defrozen every thousand years or so, eat and procreate, then when the cold
comes get frozen once more for even more years.

So, I just assume that this creature must've survived several hundreds of
thousands of years by being frozen and only procreating when the earth becomes
warm enough

~~~
staplers
Life.. uh.. finds a way

------
mandy12xx
Can anyone explain how the age of nematodes is confirmed to be 42,000 years
from the age of deposits: The duration of natural cryopreservation of the
nematodes corresponds to the age of the deposits, 30000–40000 years.

------
lucasgonze
Likely the oldest living creatures in 3 billion years of life on earth.

~~~
omeid2
You wish —jellyfish.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii)

~~~
zaarn
I don't think any of them survived _that_ long. Current record holders are
some bacteria in the Russian permafrost with half a million years (without
reproduction in the meantime)

------
Karishma1234
One thing that I have always worried about Antartic ice melting and unleashing
some ancient black death like plague for which we dont have any immunity.

~~~
ajuc
It would be extremely unlikely for ancient (millions years old) organism to be
better at penetrating human immune system than organisms that evolved in arms
race with us.

It's like taking a DOS virus and expecting it to infect iphones :)

~~~
piker
Is it true that the human "OS" (i.e., genome) has changed that radically?

~~~
ajuc
Depends how far back "ancient" is. But most sicknesses only infect closely
related species, and homo sapiens is here for maybe 100 000 years, so I
wouldn't be too worried.

On the other hand I'm very afraid what will happen when people can download,
tweak, and 3d-print viruses as a hobby.

------
thrillgore
Isn't this part of the premise behind The Thing?

------
buu700
It took me way too many passes to realize that the title said "worms" and not
"woman". That was really confusing.

------
isostatic
Hopefully the web server will come back to life in less time than that

Cached version at [https://archive.is/b0WjK](https://archive.is/b0WjK)

~~~
dfee
I really enjoy this sort of sarcasm :D

------
ethan1saacson
I misread the title as "Woman frozen ..." and mentally prepared myself for
some existentially shattering shit.

~~~
matte_black
Indeed, if such a woman _had_ been unfrozen, would she be too important of a
scientific discovery to ever be allowed to live a normal human life again?
Would she just be a research subject quarantined and experimented on for the
rest of her days?

~~~
allthenews
What does it mean for a reanimated woman from 42000 years ago to live a
"normal" life in modern times?

~~~
CrazyCatDog
Many have wondered the same. I personally think Brandon Frasier's perspective
in the film, "Encino Man," was quite apt.

~~~
saagarjha
I doubt she would be able to learn to communicate at all, assuming this
hypothetical frozen woman was and adult.

~~~
megy
Of course she would be able to communicate. Cats and dogs can communicate to
us.

~~~
saagarjha
Ok, communicate using complex language. She's not going to be picking up
English at even a basic level.

~~~
matte_black
Why can’t she? A child comes into this world with nothing and learns to speak
in time.

------
steffan
If we can do this, hey, interstellar travel!

~~~
tomcam
It’s a great time to be a nematode

~~~
vpribish
seems like almost any time works if you're a nematode

------
baxtr
First time I see the same news from two different sites trending on HN at the
same time...

------
supernova87a
Isn't this the beginning of some horror body snatching movie?

~~~
taneq
Are we sure they're really worms? Better get ready to do the hot wire blood
test on everyone on that site...

------
izifortune
Am I the only one thinking of demolition man right now?

~~~
mozumder
I'm more "Encino Man" here..

------
redleggedfrog
WTF is "siberiantimes.com". About page got nothing. Credible source? I'm
thinking not so much. Why is this here?

------
mesozoic
Wow I bet those worms are so confused. Imagine when they showed them smart
phones! Probably like that movie Encino man (when do we get Encino man 2?)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Ah, the school summer holidays. Such an exciting time for HN comments.

~~~
eletious
Reminds me of the Eternal September...

