Hello everyone! Have you ever heard about the immortal jellyfish? If your answer is no, then I will introduce its special ability and a part of its life to you!

Turritopsis dohrnii is a biologically immortal jellyfish. They originate from the Mediterranean Sea as this immortal jellyfish prefer warmer waters, but some are also found in cold waters. Their diet consists of plankton, fish eggs, and small mollusks. There is no answer to the oldest immortal jellyfish. None of it has been observed in a laboratory in an extended period of time. But one certain fact is they do die.

Turritopsis dohrnii’s life started with fertilisation. In this step, eggs and sperm released by mature jellyfish meet. Then it will grow into a planula, the free swimming tiny larvae that is a bit like a miniature flattened pear. This planula will attach itself to a solid surface, the planula develops a mouth and tentacles. And then it turns into a polyp. Adult Turritopsis dohrnii can return to this stage of development through cell transdifferentiation. After that, it turns into budding polyp. The polyp reproduces asexsually by dividing in half repeatedly to produce genetically identical copies. And then it grows into ephyra. Segments detach from the polyp and drift off into the sea. The seventh step is juvenile. Over a few weeks or months, the young Jellyfish matures into an adult. It reaches sexual maturity, the Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish has the option of reverting to the polyp stage.

It has two shapes of body during its life, the medusae and the polyp. The medusae of T. dohrnii is bell-shaped with a diameter of about 4.5 mm. the jelly in its wall is thin except for some thickening at the apex. The bright red part of the body is the stomach which walls are also the gonads of female medusae, used for the development of eggs. In this phase, it uses tenteacles to swim. Young specimens of T. dohrnii have 8 tentacles while adult have 80 until 90 tentacles. Its other stage of life is the polyp form or hydroid. It consists of stolons and upright branches that can absorb food and produce medusae buds.

When it is injured or starving it will attach itself to a surface in warm water and turn into a sort of living blob. It is called transdifferentiation. Transdifferentiation is a process wherein cells will turn into different kinds of cells. For example, muscle cells can turn into egg or sperm cells, and nerve cells turn into muscle cells. This transformation powers that have never been seen and unmatched in the animal kingdom.

Even though T. dohrnii is biologically immortal, they won’t be able to populate the whole earth since they can be eaten by predators. Moreover, transdifferentiation can only be started if they have reached maturity. If they starve or get sick as polyps, they don’t regenerate and therefore they die.

Its cell development method of transdifferentiation has inspired scientists to find a way to make stem cells using this process for renewing damaged or dead tissue in humans.










That's all about Turritopsis dohrnii, are you interested to find one?

Thank you for reading! :))