Kazuharu Arakawa, Associate Professor of the Institute for Advanced Life Sciences, Keio University, discovered a new species of tardigrade in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture, in collaboration with Jagiellonian University in Poland. ).
Tardigrades are small animals that are harmless to humans with a body length of 1 mm or less.One of the most interesting features of tardigrades is that they can be almost completely dehydrated as the surrounding environment dries.This non-metabolic "dry sleep" condition is noted for its extreme environmental tolerance to withstand ultra-low temperatures, radiation, and even exposure to space vacuum.Tardigrades in a dry state can quickly resume their life activities by water supply even after long-term storage for several years.
Tardigrades were first discovered in the 18th century, and about 1200 species are currently known in the world, but the number of new species found in Japan is still limited to 26.This time, the group discovered a new species of tardigrade belonging to the family Tardigrade (named for the nature of tardigrades that can survive for many years due to dry sleep) from moss growing on concrete in the urban area of Otsukamachi, Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture.Since this species was first found in the Shonai region, Associate Professor Arakawa and his colleagues named it Macrobiotus shonaicus.Currently, we are developing a breeding system and proceeding with genome analysis, so it is expected that understanding of extreme environmental tolerance will advance.In addition, since there are males and females in the ginkgo biloba, it is expected to be applied to research on the reproduction of tardigrades.
