Dear Worm Community,
I’m a PhD student at Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. Since 2008, I’m studying desiccation tolerance and anhydrobiosis (life without water) in C. elegans. If you’re not familiar, anhydrobiosis is an ametabolic state that is observed in many organisms upon severe water loss. It can be considered as some sort of a natural suspended animation.
Some time ago, I made a movie in which dried worms (which lost more than 80% of their body water and were driven into anhydrobiosis) are shown to come back to life with a drop of water. This movie has been published as a supplemental material to the paper http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/worm.19040. I also uploaded an HD version to Youtube: http://youtu.be/cxJSif1b6pQ.
I just wanted to share this with you, hoping that you’ll find it interesting. Please feel free to share and comment.
Cheers,
Cihan