Rachel Sipler

It looked almost like something from outer space after a couple of years because they became perfectly circular.

And

almost transparent around the outer edge.

And all of the red pigmentation that the sea cucumber is known for migrated into the center to create this scarlet nucleus.

And so we were able to see how these tissues were changing and restructuring their internal tissues to kind of better suit the life that they were currently living.

It's hard to tell from an early stage, but there's no indication from what we can see that they were regenerating into a new sea cucumber, which is, I think, one of the more confounding or bizarre parts of this research is that it's not a form of cloning or fragmentation that we would see in other marine species.

It's actually these tissues just...

finding a way to best survive and best function in their current state as kind of a new biological unit.

Absolutely.

I think we were all a little, we were just like, how can this be true?

This is so bizarre.

And it took a long time, I think, to convince ourselves that this is actually what we were seeing.

And so we, as Rachel mentioned, we kind of started with just

seeing how long these tissues will survive in natural seawater conditions.

And then once they were surviving, we're like, okay, well, there must be mechanisms supporting this.

So is cellular proliferation happening?

Is their immune system functional?

How are they fueling their cells?

Where are they getting their nutrients from?

And I think every new discovery just propelled us into a new question.