它还活着！大自然的怪异故事产生了一家生物技术公司
想象一下，一部令人恐惧的电影，讲述了一个在犹他州沙漠中坠毁在宇宙飞船中的外星生物。该生物有一个球形的身体，八只笨拙的爪子，还有一个尖锐的爪子，还有一个牙齿牙齿令人讨厌的环形头。白色外套的男子将其拖到一个秘密的政府保管库中，经过一系列测试，它作为标本ET907归档。
The initial public notoriety fades and the alien is forgotten until one night 10 years later. A violent storm causes a leak in the roof of the government storage building and all the specimens, including ET907, get wet. As lightning intermittently flashes across its face, it slowly fills out, absorbing the rain like a lifeblood. It has returned from the dead!
The creature breaks out of the compound and goes on a lumbering rampage, smashing up 7-Elevens, piercing its victims with its stylet and sucking out their bodily fluids like so many Big Gulps.
Finally, it is captured. The Pentagon wants to blow it to smithereens, but the hero scientist, in the interest of preserving the body for scientific study, persuades them to desist. He is given the job of terminating the alien without obliterating it.
But the creature is wise to his tricks. The moment he starts poking at it, it starts to change. In a climax of computer-generated effects, we watch the creature shrivel up. Its limbs recede into its body as waxy extrusions pop out all over its body, covering it with a shiny film. Eventually it folds into a featureless blob.
他尽一切努力：将其冻结至200摄氏度，将其加热至150 c，用辐射爆炸1,000倍，将其杀死人并将其放入压力箱中的6,000倍我们的气氛中，这是我们最深层的撞击力量的六倍海洋。他将其浸入各种讨厌的浴中：液氮，碳酸酸，硫化氢。他甚至在其中射击了致命的电子流。没有什么可用。最终，他安排NASA将其发送到空间真空中，然后将其带回。
当航天飞机返回地球时，科学家用他所有的测试设备冲向它，经过许多天后，野兽终于死了。在实现目标之后，他陷入了狂热和con悔，认识到这种狂野，不受欢迎的有机体的宏伟壮丽。在学分卷之前，他会说一个具有讽刺意味的单词 - 但请等待！野兽还没有死，我们看到其中的一个明显的抽搐，因为它被带走在gurney上等待续集。
Stranger than fiction
Welcome to the world of the tardigrade. Except for some artistic license with the size of this typically 1-millimeter-long invertebrate, all of these prodigious powers of survival have been documented.
Tardigrade（也称为苔藓猪或水熊）住在我们星球上到处都是水分，无论是盐还是新鲜。当这种水分消失时，它采用了一系列隐形生物策略来暂停其动画，将其新陈代谢降低到正常的0.01％，并以不到原始水分的1％赚取。这种生存机制已被证明持续了长达10年。
The founders of Biomatrica realized that the tardigrade's abilities would save money and protect important specimens in laboratories.
Interestingly, it can pursue one of four pathways to survival according to the environmental challenge that presents itself: anhydrobiosis for desiccation or drying out, cryobiosis for freezing, osmobiosis for loss of water potential or anoxybiosis for a reduction in oxygen tension.
当它形成其防御性球（称为TUN）时，动物免受了海藻糖的存在，即保持细胞结构完整的糖。糖将糖键合在一起，并用自己的水分子的氢键键合，形成三维玻璃外壳。
In pursuit of the tardigrade's hardiness
罗尔夫·穆勒（RolfMüller）在他的脑海中没有看到我们的电影，但他确实认识到2004年，当他和他的妻子朱迪·穆勒·科恩（JudyMüller-CohnBiomatrica，一家私有的圣地亚哥公司生物稳定产品for industry, academia and the medical field. They are both molecular biologists and had been studying the tardigrade closely.
They were also well aware of the methods being employed in the handling of laboratory samples. Lab results, samples and medicines were stored in large freezers at minus 40 to minus 80 degrees C. Such methods were bulky and expensive energy hogs and the two wondered if they couldn’t improve this method by translating the mechanism used by the water bear and other organisms.
Rather than try to replicate the use of the sugar trehalose, they developed a dissolvable glass that could be made in a simple plastic matrix in which shrink-wrapped molecules were stored at room temperature. From their study of computer modeling, they had figured out which chemicals were needed to catalyze the natural process and, in an IP-protected revelation, realized how to mimic the sequence with synthetic materials.
在每个分子包裹的情况下，可以在室温下存储和运输样品，从而消除了制冷的需求。穆勒（Müller）和穆勒·科恩（Müller-Cohn）认识到，这在节省能源和金钱之外具有广泛的影响。如果冷藏破裂，或者由于缺乏冷藏或运输，可能不会将花费数百个小时收集的样本丢失，或者急需的药物可能不会被输送到遥远的地方。betway必威娱乐
Biomatrica's first products were synthetic polymers that stabilized DNA and RNA molecules, and since then they have developed products for the forensics, biobanking, research and biomolecular diagnostics fields, enhancing assays, and allowing stabile transport of tissue and blood taken directly from patients, for example.
The company's first clients were sheriff’s offices in California and Florida interested in preserving forensic samples from the field. Later the FBI and the CIA would come calling, interested in the process. UC San Diego contracted to convert many of their lab storage units. In 2013, the FBI completed a five-year study that confirmed the efficacy of Biomatrica’s脱落product.
Research isn't drying up
Biomatrica's latest product initiative is a cell stability platform that allows entire cells to be dried down, stored and transported at ambient temperature and revived with water. In one test, fibroblasts dried and stored for four weeks acheived a 95 percent survival rate.
这些新工具可能会对基于细胞的药物的多个分支有影响：皮肤愈合，烧伤和伤口，糖尿病治疗，神经元疾病和再生医学，在那里使用间充质干细胞来重新生长组织。该公司正在寻找与研究和开发合作的投资者。
在环境温度下稳定分子和可预见的人类细胞，以便可以将它们存储和运输而无需cold chain logisticswill have an impact beyond making research labs more green. In out-of-the way places without power or infrastructure, such as some of the West African communities now struggling with Ebola, it may mean bringing humans back from death's door.
这要归功于一个小的，被忽视的生物，称为Tardigrade。
