An ‘immortal’ jellyfish could hold clues to anti-aging among humans, as it is the only species of its kind capable of reverting to its juvenile state and growing back to an adult throughout its entire life.
A team of researchers, led by the University of Oviedo in Spain, mapped the genetic code of the Turritopsis dohrnii (T. dohrnii) and found that, unlike other species of jellyfish that lose their ‘immortality’ at sexual maturity, this one holds on to it because it has twice the number of genomes associated with copying and repairing DNA.
The jellyfish activates this ‘superpower’ to avoid predators, allowing it to revert to a cyst, then forms as a polyp attached to the seafloor and when the threat is gone, the creature starts back on the road to maturity.
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