Immortal Jellyfish!
Researchers have documented the first immortal animal, a jellyfish species called Turritopsis nutricula. The species has been seen to reverse its aging and revert to its its earlier polyp stage, periodically restarting its lifecycle.
Most biologists attribute aging process in humans and other animals to “telomeres”, which are tiny caps on the ends of each chromosome. Telomeres protect DNA from being corrupted and destroyed, but during every repetition of the cell cycle, they become incrementally shorter. Eventually the telomeres become so short that cells cannot divide at all, a point known as the Hayflick Limit.
All evidence suggests that Turritopsis can repeat this process indefinitely, meaning that it will never die as a consequence of aging, ever. Researchers suggested that studying the Turritopsis could lead to breakthroughs in reversing the human aging process.
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