Russian scientists told “Gazeta.ru” about an experiment in which the fifth generation of the dynasty of “space” fruit flies back from orbit to Earth. It turned out that in weightlessness flies breed not worse, and even better than in the laboratory.
November 10 crew returned to Earth International Space Station, and along with it landed safely fly Drosophila, which 12 days were on board the ISS together with cosmonauts. More precisely, the larvae that hatched in space from deferred flies eggs.
These larvae – the fifth generation of space Drosophila.
On the experiments conducted by the Institute of Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, “the Newspaper” said its director, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Irina Ogneva.
The founders of the dynasty of space flies flew into space July 19, 2014 on board the satellite “Foton M» №4. For 44 days in orbit flight flies laid eggs from which developed the second generation, passing through all stages of development: egg – larva – pupa – adult fly (imago). Flies of the second generation also had time to lay eggs, so that the descent capsule back to Earth the second generation of flies and larvae of the third generation.
Unlike geckos, which are not established yet because died on landing , with the flies, everything was fine.
Having been in space larvae partially left for further observation on Earth. These larvae developed into adult flies lay eggs. Thus came the fourth generation of fruit flies, which again had the honor to become astronauts.
October 29 fourth generation flies was sent on a transport ship “Progress M-25M» on the Russian segment of the ISS, where they were with for 12 days. And returned to Earth larvae already the fifth generation.
«Thus, we conducted a unique experiment with repeated exposure of fruit flies in space, – says Irina Ogneva. –
This experiment was not yet in the world. All insects were still alive, feel good.
But in order to study the changes occurring with them in microgravity, they had to fix. And due to the interaction with Roscosmos, RSC “Energia”, Rosaviation that provide quick delivery of biomaterial, we managed to fix it in record time – within half an hour after landing. It was very important as soon as possible after the termination of weightlessness fix biomaterial to not start compensatory processes on Earth. One and a half hours – a record time for such experiments ».
From space returned a very large number of larvae, and some of them scientists left for further study in a living form.
Thus, the space experiment with fruit flies actually completed, and now the experts will explore and live, and fixed flies by all possible means.
In particular, they plan to explore the changes that have arisen in their proteins, especially proteins in the cell skeleton, to estimate the stress response, to analyze gene activity in space in comparison with the activity of genes in the control group of flies in the world.
«It will be the molecular cell research – says Irina Ogneva. – While we can not yet say what changes have occurred in Drosophila at the cellular and molecular levels, but we can note changes in their behavior and reproduction. Compared to terrestrial conditions in space Drosophila breeding actively. We got a lot more larvae than to earth. So we can conclude that development in microgravity and terrestrial conditions occurs somewhat differently ».
No comments:
Post a Comment