The comb jelly can fuse with another (including nervous and digestive systems)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/30/science/comb-jellies-fuse-single-organism/index.html

by alok-g • 2 years ago

101 19 2 years ago

cnn.com

kpjas• 2 years ago

Direct link to the paper: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(24)...

theogravity• 2 years ago

Wonder if they were able to fuse more than two.

k_sze• 2 years ago

This makes me think of a few follow-up questions:

- Since we know that fusion happens to damaged jellies, do they remain permanently fused? Or do they eventually grow back the missing parts and split up again?

- If they do split up again, do both individuals wait for the other one to completely heal before splitting? If one side started off less damaged and healed faster, can it abandon/reject the other side without waiting for the other side to completely heal?

pests• 2 years ago

Any time anything like this comes up I think back to a documentary on sponges and how they can have multiple individuals in one body, or one individual taking on multiple bodies. Maybe I am wrong, but this has always fascinated me in terms of what an organism is, about super organisms, and even more outlandish thoughts.

asplake• 2 years ago

Perhaps more surprising (certainly it was to me), the Portuguese man o' war is a colony organism also.

jbotz• 2 years ago

What about humans? Are we individual, indivisible beings or are we colonies of cells cooperating as a superorganism? That may sound like a dumb question since our cells are so specialized that they can't survive individually and can't "stop cooperating"... or can they?

They can, that's what we call cancer... it's some of our cells rebelling and deciding to do their own thing, and to hell with the superorganism. Of course that isn't all that smart since the cancer will die when we die, right? Well, maybe not... although I don't know of any documented case in humans, some cancers are known to migrate off their original organism and colonize others! An example of this is the tasmanian devil face cancer... it started on one individual and spread to others, the tumors on all infected devils having the genes of the original individual.

But what about individual cells? Surely the buck stops there and they are individual, indivisible organisms? Not so fast! Cells of all eucaryotes (that's us) contain "organs" (mitochondria) that were once a separate form of life and still have their own genetic code, completely separate from the nuclear genetic code of our cells. Not only that, but it was recently discovered that they are still independent enough that they can migrate from one cell to another on their own.

So, yeah, "individual organism" is an abstract concept that has different meanings at different scales and even at a specific scale is rather fluid. And I think "individual self" (or mind) is like that too, but that's another story...

jsrcout• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_Life_of_Henrietta...

ethbr1• 2 years ago

Better understanding of the mechanisms of allorecognition would be huge for transplant surgeries.

For people trying to decide between death and transplant, possibly being able to tune down human-twitchy self identification would be amazing.

To say nothing of those with autoimmune disorders, most of which have horrific symptoms.

tliltocatl• 2 years ago

Jellies immune system is much more primitive, so not much to learn there, unfortunately.

Modified3019• 2 years ago

Relevant if you like these creatures, an article on how an aquarium managed to raise them: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/stories/growing-jellies

DonHopkins2• 2 years ago

Reminds me of the fictional, implausible drug called "Merge", from Rudy Rucker's book "Wetware", the first book in the Ware Tetralogy:

https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/549301/

Vertigo, Mad Mountain Man:

The first book in Rucker’s Ware Tetralogy was okay but I had this to say about the ending:

The end was simply dreadful; it just fizzled out. There was very little conclusion and a lot of untied loose ends. It was so bad I was literally looking around for missing pages. Will I read the remaining books in the tetralogy? Probably as I have bought them as an omnibus, but another ending like that one will likely stop me dead.

Well I didn’t even reach the ending in this second book – Wetware – it was simply too dreadful.

It was filled with the most implausible plot turns driven by the most unlikely character motivations. The entire progress of the book became more and more unrealistic as it went on. In the end I read about 150 pages out of 200; I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the last 50 pages! Simply none of the critical decisions made by the rather large and badly managed cast were at all believable.

Then there was the science, this was supposed to be cyberpunk, and it did have more of a cyberpunk feel than the last book, but I expect cyberpunk to be moderately hard SF; the technology should be a believable extrapolation of current technology. But this was more science fantasy and at times I’d have begrudged the ‘Science’ part of that description. The worst example appears in the first few pages; a new drug called merge. Now this drug has some pretty awesome properties. Under its affect a person’s body is reduced to a puddle with bones somewhere inside which is supposed to be absolutely and massively addictive. Supposedly the drug loosens the ‘binding’ between cells or something. Also, should two (or more) people take the drug together their bodies, in the form of puddles in a bowl of some sort, can actually ‘merge’ (giving various orgasmic experiences to the participants). Then after the drug wears off the bodies simply recombine, somehow miraculously separating if two (or more) have merged, and re-emerge from the puddle back into a normal body again. That’s assuming nobody has interfered with them whilst they are under the influence, like removing bones or scattering them. I mean I know we’re coming up with some pretty funky biochemistry these days but, please…. And there are many other bits of technology, central to the plot rather than peripheral, which are equally pure fantasy.

Now all this might be just about liveable with had it been well written. Sadly it was not. Despite the fact this was only 200 pages long there were multiple scenes that contributed absolutely nothing to the plot. They could have been simply removed and the reader would have lost nothing. One particularly bad example had one of the main protagonists enter a bar of sorts where he just happens to sit down and start chatting with a couple of characters he’s never met before, one of whom just happens to be another moderately important character. As the reader reads this passage it is natural for them to assume that this meeting will have some significance, but it has absolutely none; they never meet again (or I assume not; one was dead by the time I quit but with the book you never know) and nothing of any consequence takes place during the meeting itself. What on Earth is that all about?

So sadly this one gets a big thumbs down and is the first book I’ve failed to finish for almost exactly a year (is it something to do with the middle of August?).

Qem• 2 years ago

Can they cheat death this way? Say, an senescent individual fusing with another younger than itself, instead of dying?

bitwize• 2 years ago

THE MERGING IS COMPLETE.

The comb jelly can fuse with another (including nervous and digestive systems)

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