Quote of the Week: If only ...

I recently overheard a now familiar conversation, one fly biologist lamenting to another that there is no feasible way to cryopreserve flies the way one can do with C. elegans, mammalian cells and (thankfully for the DRSC) cultured fly cell lines. But perhaps--given what some other flies can do--there is still hope for some solution to endless stock flipping?

... the larvae of Polypedilum vanderplanki can be completely dehydrated, and will enter into a state of 'cryptobiosis' during which all metabolic processes apparently cease ... The larva consumes no oxygen--it will survive in an atmosphere of pure nitrogen and it can withstand injuries that in normal life would set up a chain of disturbances that would kill the larva. When it is put back into water it quickly swells to normal size, and quietly resumes its breathing and feeding.

H. Oldryod, The Natural History of Flies