A jellyfish smaller than your fingernail can hit a biological reset button: when injured, starving, or dying, it dissolves its adult body and reverts to a juvenile polyp, then grows up all over again. Turritopsis dohrnii may be the closest thing on Earth to true immortality — and scientists are racing to steal its trick.
Researchers at the University of Padova show the actual life-cycle reversal under the microscope — an adult medusa collapsing back into a polyp colony.
The full biology: how a 4.5 mm hydrozoan pulls off transdifferentiation, and how it quietly spread across the world's oceans hitchhiking in ship ballast.
A biologist unpacks the 2022 genome study that mapped the exact genes for DNA repair and stem-cell renewal behind the reset.
Smithsonian on the strange fact that this creature can, in principle, cheat death indefinitely — and why it still usually gets eaten anyway.
A tight, well-sourced primer on where it lives, how big it gets, and the precise mechanism that makes it biologically immortal.
How comparing the immortal jellyfish's genome to a mortal cousin is pointing researchers toward the genetics of human aging and cancer.
The classic NYT Magazine profile of Shin Kubota, the eccentric Kyoto scientist who is the only person cultivating the creature — and who sings karaoke ballads about it.