When the worm returns ... from beyond the grave
As if the prospects of global warfare, the potential of artificial intelligence to destroy our society and the return of Paris Hilton to pop culture relevance weren’t terrifying enough, something even worse is happening: Scientists are reviving worms that have been dead for 46,000 years and allowing them to breed.
OK, maybe we can’t quite put our fingers on why this is bad, but instinctively we know that it is. Dead things need to stay dead, am I right? Did we learn nothing from “Resident Evil?” Did we learn nothing from Paris Hilton?
But no. According to The New York Times: “In 2018, Anastasia Shatilovich, a scientist from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science RAS in Russia, thawed two female worms from a fossilized burrow dug by gophers in the Arctic. The worms, which were buried approximately 130 feet in the permafrost, were revived simply by putting them in water.”
I knew I should have paid more attention in fifth grade when Mrs. Pierce was going on and on about permafrost. This may be great news for Ted Williams, but for the rest of us it could hardly be worse. Plus, this happened in 2018 and we’re just finding out about it now? That means the worms have a five-year head start.
If you can come back to life after 46,000 years, I imagine you know a thing or two, know what I’m saying? When you’re back alive again, your evolutionary journey is going to be spring loaded, meaning these worms are probably already growing thumbs and learning to play Cover 2 defense.
According to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology, “International research team shows that a newly discovered nematode species from the Pleistocene share a molecular toolkit for survival with the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.”
OK, the only words I understood out of that sentence were “toolkit” and “survival,” but that’s enough to know I don’t like it. I also don’t like that these creatures can be brought back to life just by “putting them in water,” like some kind of prehistoric Rice-a-Roni.
“The roughly millimeter-long worms were able to resist extreme low temperatures by entering a dormant state called cryptobiosis, a process researchers at the institute have been trying to understand,” the Times wrote. “The creatures, which have a life span measured in days, died after reproducing several generations in the lab, researchers said.”
Soooo — are they like really dead this time, or will civilization be facing the same zombie-worm horror show all over again in another 46,000 years?
And we don’t know what will become of the offspring, either. Nothing this old has reproduced since Al Pacino. Maybe they’ll be just plain old normal worms, or maybe they will have some worm superpower — the species has already figured out how to get into a sealed bag of cornmeal, so I don’t put anything past them.
You also wonder how this feels from the worm’s perspective. When you lose consciousness the world is dominated by cavemen, and you wake up to discover it’s dominated by the Freedom Caucus. Everything has changed, yet nothing has changed at all.
And if we were just talking about worms it might be one thing, but you know this is just the beginning: “The major take-home message or summary of this discovery is that it is, in principle, possible to stop life for more or less an indefinite time and then restart it,” Dr. Teymuras Kurzchalia told the Times, which went on to write, “there are no clear practical applications for a deep understanding of cryptobiosis.
Excuse me? No practical application? The population of the nation’s cemeteries might beg to differ. I know it’s not as simple as pouring water on Gramps and having him go right back to complaining about his taxes as if nothing ever happened, but it’s worth a shot. In another 46,000 years we may finally be rid of Paris Hilton.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Rowland column: Russian scientists revives worms dormant for 46,000 years
