Cryptic anhydrobiotic potential in man: implications in medicine.
Anhydrobiosis ("life without water") is a state of suspended animation in a dry, ametabolic condition which some species enter before desiccation stress. This state confers resistance to other abiotic stresses such as radiation and heat. Once specimens are rehydrated life resumes. Application of such long-term storage in dry state without loss of viability would bring a considerable advance in organ transplant, maintenance of cell/tissue banks, vaccine storage and transport and many other medical applications. Since anhydrobiosis brings biological advantage to organisms, one would expect it to be positively selected during evolution. Moreover, our still limited understanding of the human genome, together with occasional discoveries of hidden endogenous processes, as well as reports of suspended animation in higher animals leads us to hypothesize the existence of cryptic anhydrobiosis in man. This hypothesis could be tested in laboratory animals and human-derived biological samples using several physical-chemical pre-conditioning/desiccation/rehydration parameters. Finding cryptic anhydrobiosis in human tissues would be a breakthrough in medicine providing means for long-term storage of biological samples in several stressful conditions.