Ted Staberow writes:
> It does not seem possible for a dehydrated organism to
>maintain metabolic funtions. Is this possible??
>Metabolic functions can be suspended. This happens in spores, which have
obviously evolved to survive this. In the case of Artemis (the brine
shrimp), I'm pretty sure it is the organism itself that survives
dehydration, and this may also be the case with rotifers, though I'm less
sure of that. Organisms that survive dehydration have mechanisms to prevent
protein denaturation during drying. Careful freeze drying should manage to
minimize denaturation.
David Fell,
School of Biological & Molecular Sciences,
Oxford Brookes University,
Oxford OX3 0BP,
UK
daf at bms.brookes.ac.uk
