Oh Man, Water Bears

The Wired Science blog ran a story yesterday about tardigrades, probably my favorite almost-microscopic eight-legged invertebrates. It seems that last year some scientists sent a bunch of the lovable little critters up on a satellite to be exposed to cosmic rays, solar radiation and the "frigid vacuum of space." (Wired Science refers to this as "shoot[ing] tardigrades into naked orbit." Heh.)

It seems that, along with being COMPLETELY ANERABLE(!) a water bear can slow its biological processes to almost a complete stop, withstand extremes of heat and cold, and, as if that weren't enough, it can repair some forms of genetic damage.

You'd think that, with everything going for it, the water bear would garner more scientific attention than it has. That may change in the near future, though. Following the success of (and perhaps spurred by) the Tardigrades In Space (TARDIS) project, biologists with the National Human Genome Research Institute are planning to sequence the genome of one species of tardigrade. For now, though, there are only around 100 scientists around the world studying these amazing creatures.