Post #13922

y ages, gets sick or dies, there is no way back for the cells. In Turritopsis, everything is different. When an adult jellyfish is on the verge of death, its body cells behave as if they were at the very beginning of life! At the very, very beginning, when the whole organism is a biomix without any specialization. Thus, thanks to transdifferentiation, an early stage of a jellyfish, a polyp, is formed from an adult jellyfish. It looks like a small palm tree: a tiny stem with tentacles at the top. Having attached itself to the substrate, the baby jellyfish filters the water and accumulates nutrients. And then the expanded polyp is divided into fragments, from which new young jellyfish grow, absolute clones of the original one. The same one who once grew old or fell ill. It turns out that turritopsis not only assembles a new body using the cells of the old one - it also reproduces at the same time. And now we come to the point where biology comes into conflict with philosophy. The original jellyfish and the newly formed clones from the polyp are absolutely identical. Moreover, they are made from the same cells. That is, in fact, the biological life of the organism did not stop, because its cells did not die, but were simply “reassembled”, like Legos. That's why turritopsis is called a biologically immortal organism - if no one eats it, it will reassemble itself ad infinitum. But if you look at this from a philosophical point of view: which of the clones will be the “same” original jellyfish? And will it happen at all, because, in essence, now it’s just a bunch of daughter clones. It is very good that the nervous system of turritopsis is primitive, they are far from our human thoughts. Nobody ate it, we managed to make a bunch of our own kind - success! Author: Arina Taran Editor: Elizaveta Isaeva 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot