Monthly Archives: June 2017

In Brief While studying the effects of space on a species of regenerating flatworm, scientists noticed that one of the subjects ended up growing two heads. Space travel is hypothesized to have facilitated this aberration. Space Hydra

The International Space Station (ISS) is an invaluable tool that helps us understand how our Earth-based technologies and biology operates in space. It has been confirmed that space travel does indeed impact human biology, even down to the genetic level. Even so, researchers looking into how a species of flatworms fare in space were not prepared forwhat they found.

To the great shock of the team, one of the fifteen amputated planarian flatworms that spent five weeks aboard the ISS ended up growing back two heads once back on Earth. These findings have been published in the journal Regeneration.

Planarian flatworms have remarkable regeneration abilities. They are able to regenerate complex body systems even from a tiny piece of their bodies. After their all-inclusive stay upon the ISS, the worms were brought back to Earth and observed for an additional 20 months. During this time, researchers noticed that one of the worms was regenerating its head, along with another. The scientists then amputated the two heads and the worm once again grew back two heads.

They may not have been able to pinpoint the exact changes that allowed for this phenomenon to occur, but the scientists had never seen this happen in eighteen years of studying these worms. This lead the team to hypothesize that space travel is what caused the change.

With humanity gearing up to launch the first humans to Mars, discovering how biology changes as a result of space travel is of the utmost importance. As humans continue to spend longer periods of time in space, we need to know what to expect so we can prepare for these changes or maybe even take steps to prevent them.

One possible implication of these findings is that once we figure out the mechanisms of space travel that triggered this change, we may be able to harness them to achieve desired results, like giving humans the ability to regenerate, for example. As the paper notes, it could be used to trigger desired morphological, neurological, physiological, and bacteriomic changes for various regenerative and bioengineering applications.

Original post:

Scientists Hypothesize That Space Travel Caused This Worm To Grow Two Heads - Futurism

Thursday June 15, 2017

Biologists at Tufts University in Massachusetts sent a bunch of flatworms to space for five weeks just to see what would happen, and were taken aback by the results.

"This one worm, due to its space travel experience, the cells got confused, and grew a head at the posterior end," biologist Michael Levin, co-author of the study, told As It Happens host Carol Off.

The researchers sent a group of planarian flatworms some amputated and some whole to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX commercial resupply vessel on Jan. 10, 2015, to find out how the experience would affect their regenerative abilities.

One of the dissected worms came back with an extra pair of googly eyes.

"We were extremely surprised," Levin said. "It's quite a change to their normal regenerative pattern, so we knew something important had happened to it up in space."

While flatworms are known for the ability to re-growtheir heads and tails,the spontaneous generation a second head is so rare it's almost unheardof. Under normal circumstances, the worm would have simply generated a new tail.

Levin says he's seen two-headed worms before. In fact, he's made some in his lab. But it's not something that occurs naturally.

"So we knew it was possible," he said. "We had no idea this would happen from space travel."

The change appears to be permanent. The scientists have since cut off both the creature's heads, andit grew them both back.

The flatworms lived on the International Space Station for five weeks inside sealed tubes filled with water and air. (NASA)

"As it turns out, the two-headedness is just the tip of the iceberg, because we also found out that these worms were different with respect to their microbiomes, their behaviour, and so on," he said.

When the wormsreturned to Earth, scientists took them out of their five-week-old water and put them in apetri dish with fresh water.

The worms went into "water shock,"curling up and refusing to move for about two hours something that would normally only happen if they'd been placed in an unfamiliar solution.

"So something happened to that water in space, which they obviously got used to," Levin said.

They also got over their natural fear of light.

Levin's team observed the space worms in their lab 20 months after they returned toEarth,comparing their bodies and behaviours to a group of worms that never left the planet.

When exposed to light in the petri dish, the space worms did not seek out darker corners, asother worms did.

"So their behaviour had changed and enabled them to spend more time in the light, Levin said.

When transferred to a petri dish of fresh water after returning from a five-week space voyage, these flatworms curled up and wouldn't move. (Junji Morokuma/Allen Discovery Center, Tufts University)

"This we measured about a year and a half after the worms had come back. So they had already been in our lab, eating the same foods and living in the same environment as the Earth-bound controls for well over a year, and still their behaviour was still altered."

The worms had also changed on a fundamental, biological level.

"We found out that even a year-and-a-half later, the complement of bacteria and the profile of different bacterial species that live in these worms is now quite a bit different between the ones that had been to space and the ones that had been left behind," Levin said.

It's not entirely clear what caused these changes, but there are numerous possibilities.

"I mean these worms have been through basically the space travel experience, and the space travel experience is not one thing," Levin said, noting they expected changes in vibrations, thegravitational field, the geomagnetic field and more.

While it would be unwise to compare worms to astronauts so far, Christ Hadfield has not grown any new limbs that we know of the results of the study could shed some light on how space travel affects us on a cellular level, Levin said.

What's more, the team's findings could have implications a little closer to home.

"Part of the importance of these kinds of experiments is not just for space travel, but for learning about how physical factors like geomagnetic fields, like gravitational forces and so on, how these affect cell behaviours," Levin said.

"We may be able to exploit those for regenerative medicine applications here on Earth."

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Regeneration.

Read more here:

Scientists 'extremely surprised' after flatworm grows 2nd head in space - CBC.ca