A microscope picture of mouse embryos after they’d returned from the International Space Station
Teruhiko Wakayama/University of Yamanashi
Mouse embryos have been cultured on the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time to discover whether or not it may be protected for people to develop into pregnant in space.
“There is a possibility of pregnancy during a future trip to Mars because it will take more than 6 months to travel there,” says Teruhiko Wakayama at the University of Yamanashi in Japan, who led the examine. “We are conducting research to ensure we will be able to safely have children if that time comes.”
Wakayama and his colleagues carried out the first steps of the experiment in their lab on Earth, extracting embryos that have been at an early two-cell stage from pregnant mice and freezing them.
The frozen embryos have been despatched to the ISS on a SpaceX rocket that launched from Florida in August 2021. They have been saved inside particular gadgets that Wakayama’s crew designed in order that astronauts on the station may simply thaw the embryos and tradition them for 4 days. The astronauts then chemically preserved the embryos and despatched them again to Earth on a return vessel.
The embryos have been solely grown for 4 days as a result of they’ll solely survive for that size of time outdoors a uterus, says Wakayama.
His crew studied the returned embryos to see if their growth had been affected by their publicity to the greater radiation and low gravity – often called microgravity – in space.
The embryos didn’t present indicators of DNA injury from the radiation publicity, presumably as a result of they have been solely in space for a brief time.
They additionally displayed regular structural growth, together with differentiation into two teams of cells that type the foundation of the fetus and placenta. This was an necessary discovering as a result of it was beforehand thought that microgravity might have an effect on the means of embryos to separate into these two totally different cell varieties, says Wakayama.
It is unclear whether or not later levels of embryo growth could be disrupted by being in space, however a earlier examine that despatched pregnant rats on NASA spaceflights for 9 to 11 days throughout the second halves of their pregnancies discovered they gave beginning to typical-weight pups after they got here again to Earth, hinting the pups had developed usually.
“Based on [this] and our results, perhaps mammalian space reproduction is possible,” says Wakayama.
However, it’s nonetheless unknown whether or not the precise supply of a mouse pup or human child at full time period could be tough below microgravity situations, he says.
His crew now plans to check whether or not mouse embryos that have been despatched to the ISS after which returned to Earth can implant in feminine mice and grow to be wholesome offspring, as this may present additional clues about the viability of embryos uncovered to space radiation and microgravity. The researchers would additionally like to check whether or not mouse sperm and eggs despatched to the ISS can be utilized to create embryos through IVF in space.
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