Tardigrade Disordered Proteins Mediate Desiccation Tolerance

Tardigrades (water bears) are a phylum of tiny, extremotolerant animals renowned for their ability to survive desiccation, freezing, boiling temperatures, intense irradiation, and even prolonged exposure to the vacuum of outer space. The functional mediators, and their mechanisms of protection, used by tardigrades to survive these extremes have not been elucidated. Tardigrades possess three novel families of tardigrade specific intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). We found that members of one of these IDP gene families are upregulated during, and are required for tardigrades to survive, desiccation.