Tiny worms have survived Chernobyl where humans can't live for 20,000 years (2024)

New Delhi,UPDATED: Mar 8, 2024 12:12 IST

Over 38 years after a nuclear disaster left Chernobyl inhabitable, a mysterious species has evolved to live amid the radiation that persists in the region.

A tiny species of worms has survived, and their genome has evolved to live and thrive in the city that remains a nuclear ghost town.

Researchers at New York University have found that these microscopic worms are extremely resilient and exposure to chronic radiation from Chernobyl has not damaged their genomes. Their findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Chernobyl was a tragedy of incomprehensible scale, but we still don't have a great grasp on the effects of the disaster on local populations. Did the sudden environmental shift select for species, or even individuals within a species, that are naturally more resistant to ionizing radiation?”Sophia Tintori, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biology at NYU said.

It is worth mentioning that the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant transformed the surrounding region into the most radioactive landscape known on the planet.

The incident unfolded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's Reactor No. 4 during a late-night safety test. A combination of design flaws, operator errors, and a lack of safety measures led to a devastating explosion that released a massive amount of radioactive materials into the atmosphere.

The team collected, cultured, and cryopreserved 298 wild nematode isolates from areas varying in radioactivity within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Nematodes, tiny worms with simple genomes and rapid reproduction, were selected as they are useful for understanding basic biological phenomena.

“These worms live everywhere, and they live quickly, so they go through dozens of generations of evolution while a typical vertebrate is still putting on its shoes,” said Matthew Rockman, a professor of biology at NYU and the study’s senior author.

The team was surprised at how lush and overgrown the exclusion zone of Chernobyl looked, which made them question how some plants and animals have survived the biggest nuclear disaster on the planet.

Worms were collected from locations throughout the zone with different amounts of radiation, ranging from low levels on par with New York City (negligibly radioactive) to high-radiation sites on par with outer space.

They were surprised at the analysis of the worms when they could not detect a signature of radiation damage on the genomes of the worms from Chernobyl.

“This doesn't mean that Chernobyl is safe — it more likely means that nematodes are really resilient animals and can withstand extreme conditions. We also don’t know how long each of the worms we collected was in the Zone, so we can't be sure exactly what level of exposure each worm and its ancestors received over the past four decades,” Sophia added.

The findings provide insights into individual variations in DNA repair, offering valuable information despite the genetic simplicity of the worms.

This information may enhance our understanding of natural variations in humans. Understanding how various individuals within a species respond to DNA damage is crucial for cancer researchers examining why some genetically predisposed individuals develop cancer, while others do not.