Will Invertebrate Astronauts Help Us Get to Mars?
20.05.12
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In December 2006, the Discovery space shuttle launched into orbit carrying a seven-member crew, its first Scandinavian astronaut and 400 soil-dwelling, bacteria-munching microscopic worms.
Though not the first worms in space, they were still pioneers, becoming the first to produce 12 new generations of offspring, and do so inside a remotely automated system with no need for a biologist on board to oversee it. Meanwhile, back on Earth, a team of scientists observed the worms and gathered data via video beamed back from space.
"At a very simple level, we wanted to see if an animal could go through more generations than any animal ever looked at in space," said Nathaniel Szewczyk of the University of Nottingham, senior author of the study, published on Wednesday in the Journal of the Royal Society, Interface.
Szewczyk's team found that throughout the 12 generations, the Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans worm developed normally from egg to adulthood, moved as it should when fully fed and recovered after a period of induced starvation. "These observations establish C. elegans as a biological model that can be used to detect changes in animal growth, development, reproduction and behavior in response to environmental conditions during long-duration spaceflight," according to the paper.
Source: PBS NewsHour