Study
The biology of tardigrade disordered proteins in extreme stress tolerance
Hesgrove, Cherie; Boothby, Thomas C.
Cell Communication and Signaling, 2020
Reviews what is known about the several families of disordered and tardigrade-specific proteins implicated in stress tolerance, and what remains unresolved about how they work.
- Studied in
- Tardigrada
- Sample size
- review
Several distinct protein families contribute, they are not interchangeable, and no single one accounts for tardigrade tolerance; the mechanisms are only partly understood.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Tardigrade tolerance is multi-mechanism, and claims attributing it to any one molecule are premature.
How NatureHQ reads it
Kept as the counterweight to single-molecule explanations. It is why the tardigrade page here says the mechanism is partly understood rather than naming a protein and stopping.
- Review of a fast-moving area.
- Most functional work is in two laboratory species out of more than a thousand described.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Extreme survival
No animal is immune to anything. Every demonstrated survival of an extreme came from a particular starting state, lasted a measured time, and killed some fraction of the animals tested.
Desiccation tolerance
The danger in drying out is not thirst. Water holds membranes and proteins in shape, and when it leaves they collapse. Organisms that survive it fill the gap with sugars or proteins that set into a glass.
Published by: Springer journalsPublished in a Springer journal.
doi.org/10.1186/s12964-020-00670-2
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-03.