Photo: Tom Kleindinst
Octopuses are fascinating creatures.
They’re incredibly smart and adaptable.
And a team of researchers is proving that in a new study published inCell.
Photo: Tom Kleindinst
Specifically, they wanted to examine how octopuses are able to survive large temperature fluctuations.
If you think about it, humans need relatively constant temperatures to thrive.
Our brains are purposely designed to operate at a near-constant temperature.
Photo: Roger T. Hanlon
Swing too widely in one direction or another, and our nervous system quickly begins to break down.
Octopuses don’t face this problem.
Their large brains are unprotected by the skull that we have and often face temperature changes of 20 degrees.
But still, they thrive.
How do they manage this?
If you aren’t familiar with RNA, this nucleic acid looks like a single-stranded version of DNA.
And while DNA is unchangeable genetic information, RNA is more flexible.
Think of it as a genetic management system that can fluctuate if needed.
This is what helps the octopuses.
The team caught two California two-spot octopuses and acclimated one to warm water and the other to cold water.
Then, they examined their RNA.
The results were astounding.
Interestingly, they also saw that more RNA was edited when the octopus was in cold water.
When the RNA is edited, it signals that a different bang out of protein should be produced.
For octopuses, that number rises to an incredible 60%.
But that’s not all.
The team also discovered that these changes can happen quite quickly.
They did so by working with juvenile octopuses in tanks that were gradually heated or cooled.
Armed with this newfound information about RNA, the researchers are ready to take things a step further.
