Kelley says the fly spends two years as larvae over two cold seasons.
They look like dried up little raisins and thats how they survive the winter, she said. They are not developmentally active during that time, but they are still alive. This begs the question of, Does the small genome somehow enable them to go through that process, or the growing process in the summer more rapidly, or facilitate that somehow?
Smallest bug sequenced
Belgica antarctica is the first polar insect and the first freeze-tolerant insect whose genome - or genetic material - has been sequenced.
It is also the smallest bug sequenced to date. Its genome has 99 million base pairs, the DNA building blocks of an organism. Thats tiny compared with the human genome which has 3.2 billion base pairs.
Kelley says the genome gives researchers a framework to study the organism in much more depth. For example, she says, they can look for what triggers its genes to activate a protein in response to heat or cold stress.
The heat shock proteins are important in this fly, particularly because they are expressed all the time, she said. In other organisms, heat shock proteins, which are turned on in response to temperature or other stresses, in the fly they are turned on all the time. And this process may give us insight into how the fly is able to survive over the winter.
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