Life
can be hard for a young nematode, even if you are one of the spaced out worms. They are
frequently to be found on space missions, doing their best to go about their
own wormy business in spite of strange surroundings, high G-forces and
weightlessness, but these metazoans haven’t been seeking accolades or showing
pride at being the first multicellular species to be genetically decoded.
In
the current issue of Nature’s Scientific Reports, Honda et al report that their transgenic nematodes aged less when spaced
out and zooming around the earth (1). The work is also the subject of a BBC
report (2).
The
team of scientists hatched a group of transgenic eggs and split them into two
teams – one team were to get spaced out and the other to act as the control
group. Note the transgenic bit was the addition of yellow fluorescent protein
to act as a body-age indicator, and 40 days is a good old age for a nematode of
the Caenorhabditis Elegans
persuasion.
The
experimental teams were busy doing their thing for 11 days and then they were
peremptorily flash frozen – both in orbit and on terra firma. This allowed them to be stored and deconstructed at
leisure.
Firstly,
old worms have aggregates of a 35 molecule long polymer of the amino acid
glutamine building up in their muscles. Our space team had less. But the second
finding was at least as exciting after checking out their genes. Seven of them
had been down regulated (suppressed) and these seven are intimately involved in
life and death. So space travel had slowed the ageing process by changing the
endocrine signaling.
Clearly
the good news for the metazoan community is to line up for space patrol. For
the rest of us simple creatures the outlook isn’t quite so good. We have things
like bones that don’t do well in microgravity environs.
- http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120705/srep00487/full/srep00487.html
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18727012
