Fun fact: Animal embryos can be disassociated by depriving them of calcium (E-cadherin, the molecular that holds the cells together, needs to calcium to work) and then can be allowed to reassociate by adding back calcium. If you do this in early enough stages then the embryo will function and develop normally once reaggregated
Comment on sussvival instinct
danhab99@programming.dev 2 months ago
I read this thing’s entire wiki page and it’s fascinating!!
- Imo it’s not even an animal it’s just a collection of cells that can survive on their own but just don’t want too
- It will rip itself into multiple parts spontaneously because cells don’t coordinate too much. They don’t have dedicated neurons but they have a decently complex peptide based protocol.
- You can put a single Trichoplax animal through a sive that is fine enough not to damage the cells but separate them, and the cells will reform into the same animal
- They can reproduce sexually but they don’t have any of the markers that all males of all sexually reproducing species have. Plus because they only ever sexually reproduce when there’s a high density of Trichoplaxs, it’s basically a pattern of Trichoplax cells choosing to break away and combine with other cells to create new individuals.
- They’re just about as simple as e.coli and they’re the simplest animals with about 50mill base pairs divided into 6 chromosomes
- They can take the organelles of the cells they eat just because. The wiki article calls it symbiosis but that implies that organelles are alive and I don’t think they are. I think Trichoplaxs can just take tools from other creatures to use.
azi@mander.xyz 2 months ago
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
“peptide-based protocol” is a pretty good band name
davidgro@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Cellular peptide cake with mint frosting
notabot@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Thank you for the summary. I don’t have time to go down a rabbit hole at the moment, so this was just enough to sate my curiosity until I do have time.
bss03@infosec.pub 2 months ago
ISTR you can do the sieve thing with true living sponges, too. Life on earth is wild. I wonder if it will be considered mild once we find some interesting life off-planet.
clonedhuman@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fucking interesting!
azi@mander.xyz 2 months ago
I think you misread wikipedia when it talks about its endosymbioses. Whole bacteria are found within an organlle (the endoplasmic reticulum) of Trichoplaxs.
That being said what you described does happen in a number of organisms (including ‘complex’ ones like nudibranchs). They steal the chloroplasts from the algae they eat in a process called kleptoplasty. Seeing as mitochondria and chloroplasts originated as endosymbionts that were then heavily integrated into their hosts, calling kleptoplasty a form of symbiosis isn’t that unusual.
danhab99@programming.dev 2 months ago
That is even more mind blowing to me
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Then I have to ask if you were aware that mitochondria were originally external, invasive organisms
danhab99@programming.dev 2 months ago
Yes but mitochondria live in the cytoplasm. I guess I don’t have much of a grasp of size differences that small so it blew me away to think to find a life form inside of the organelle of another lifeform… I thought things were too small at that scale.