“睡美人”水熊虫冷冻续命？(下)

She and her colleagues used tardigrades of the same species and divided them into four groups.

她和她的同事使用了同一物种的缓步动物（水熊虫），并将它们分为四组。

Group one, the control group, enjoyed ambient temperatures, which gave the researchers a baseline for their general survival rates and how long they live under these normal temp conditions.

第一组，即对照组，接触周围环境温度，这为研究人员了解它们的一般存活率，也就是在正常温度条件下能活多久提供了一个基准。

The other three groups were put through a gauntlet: the researchers froze these tardigrades at (minus)–30 degrees Celsius, slowly thawed them, counted them to see how many were still alive and then froze them again.

另外三组则会经受严峻的考验: 研究人员将这些缓步动物冷冻在零下30摄氏度的环境中，慢慢解冻它们，然后数数看有多少还活着，然后再次冷冻它们。

Basically, for those six to eight months, I only froze and thawed and fed and cleaned the tardigrades and noted their survival.

基本上，在6到8个月的时间里，我只是对缓步动物进行冷冻、解冻、喂食和清洗，并记录它们的存活情况。

Overall, the team used about 700 tardigrades and kept up with the freezing-thawing cycles until no more of them reawoke.

总的来说，该团队使用了大约700只缓步动物，并持续进行一轮轮的冷冻-解冻，直到它们不再苏醒。

And after evaluating the survival rates for the four groups, the researchers found that the tardigrades that were frozen lived longer than the control group.

在评估了四组的存活率后，研究人员发现，冷冻的缓步动物比对照组存活时间更久。

When we evaluated the survival of the tardigrades, we actually saw that the tardigrades that were frozen every other week, lived about twice as long as the control group.

当我们评估缓步动物的存活情况时，我们实际上会观察到，每隔一周冷冻一次的缓步动物的寿命是对照组的两倍。

And as long as they were frozen, they didn’t really age.

只要它们处于冷冻状态，它们就不会真正衰老。

But which also made the experiments very, very long, because they just lived twice as long as we expected them to live.

但这也让实验变得很漫长，因为它们的寿命是我们预期的两倍。

The longest living tardigrade in this experiment, as a reference, was 169 days old when it died!

作为参考，本实验中存活时间最长的缓步动物活了169天！

Meanwhile the longest living critter in the control group, the one with water bears that didn’t go in and out of the freezer, was 93 days old.

与此同时，对照组中寿命最长的动物，也就是不进出冷冻库的水熊虫，存活了93天。

These results were recently published in the Journal of Zoology.

这些研究结果近期发表在《动物学杂志》上。

And this means that the time the tardigrades were frozen didn’t seem to affect their internal clock, almost like it wound down during their dormant phase.

这意味着缓步动物的冷冻时间似乎不会影响它们的体内生物钟，好像体内生物钟在休眠阶段会慢下来一样。

And this presents some interesting avenues to explore for potential applications to humans.

这为探索潜在的人类应用领域提供了一些有趣的途径。

Now, I guess, many people will start thinking about, like, freezing humans, sending them into space like the sci-fi movies.

现在，我想，很多人会开始考虑，比如，将人类冷冻，把人类像科幻电影那样送入太空。

I don’t think we have to go that far quite yet.

我认为我们还不需要走那么远。

But an application that I personally just find very interesting is, like, freezing and thawing tissues or cells—for example, stem cells that we can use for medical purposes.

但我个人觉得非常有趣的一个应用领域是冷冻、解冻组织或细胞，比如说，用于医疗目的的干细胞。

If a cancer patient was able to have their healthy cells extracted before chemotherapy and put into a tardigradelike state of dormancy,

如果癌症患者能够在化疗前提取健康细胞，并将其置于类似缓步动物的休眠状态，

those cells could potentially then be replanted once the harsh treatment was complete, and normal activity—healthy cell or organ function—might resume in much a shorter amount of time.

那么，艰难的治疗一结束，就把这些细胞重新移植到体内，正常的活动——健康的细胞或器官功能——可能会在很短的时间内恢复。

We still have a long way to go.

我们还有很长的路要走。

Researchers now need to understand the mechanisms involved in the tardigrades’ shift between being awake and dormant before we can explore bringing anything over to the human side of the story.

研究人员现在需要了解缓步动物在清醒和休眠之间转换的机制，然后才能探索人类方面的故事。

But this work shows us that solutions for a healthy future can exist in unexpected places and even in a critter like the tardigrade, a most unlikely Sleeping Beauty.

但这项研究向我们展示，健康未来的解决方案可能存在于意想不到之处，甚至存在于最不可能的睡美人——缓步动物身上。

For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Ashleigh Papp.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是阿什利·帕普。