After the death of the animal, new molecules are synthesized in the cells, which did not exist during the life of the organism. The study of such molecules will help scientists estimate when the organs of a dead donor are suitable for transplantation.
Geneticists called the Thanatotranscript a set of recently discovered RNA molecules, based on the Greek word thanatos - death. The fact is that these molecules were found in cells 48 and 96 hours after the death of mice and zebrafish. Of course, in a dead body, neither tissue, nor cells, let alone organic molecules disappear immediately, but the appearance of a whole group of transcripts (microRNAs) indicated that genes create a completely new class of molecules that did not exist during the life of the organism.
"New molecules were synthesized in the cells on the second or third day after the death of the animal," says the head of the study, Alexander Pozhitkov, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, "this means that significant reserves of energy and resources remain in the dead body to support self-organizing processes." Another research participant, geneticist Tomislav Domadzhet-Losho from the Catholic Croatian University, noted that the genes (and more than 500 of them have been identified), which are most active after death, during life manifest themselves during stress, problems with the immune system, inflammation, cancer, that is a whole "resuscitation team" is included, albeit at the cellular level.
Scientists became interested in "life after death" not out of idle curiosity and not in search of the "last refuge of the soul": their discovery is an important help in assessing the time when organs of a dead donor are suitable for transplantation. And in forensic science, such data will help establish the exact time of death.