Pretty much the effects of G have come since the beginning of the space age, scientists ingenious ways up forces and weightlessness on the human body to test, to the amusement park rides with the. The mechanisms of Project Apollo was one of the dreaded human Center joint; a hollow ball 10 x 6 foot mounted at the end of a 50-foot arm, which around quickly spun simulate "dynamic flight."
Astronaut John Glenn described you memorably as "dreaded" and "sadistic" in his memoirs, add, "You.... were strain every muscle of the body to the maximum when you relax until thought your vision would be as a set of blinders limit and you would start", Black out. "It was kind of baptism by fire."
NASA has set the use of centrifuges, for a long time, although the United States air force still a human centrifuge at the base in New Mexico. And their use on board the probe as a means to simulate gravity for long-duration manned space missions of the future, which the effects of weightlessness on astronauts (particularly bone muscle - and de-scaling atrophy) was proposed.
And now, centrifuges are used is, apparently, other creatures, to submit to the same conditions. A new paper by a team of us and Russian scientists, which this week in PLoS investigated the effects of microgravity on good, snails. She heard me. Snails.
Blogger Scicurious summed up the many benefits of snails in space, which outlined the authors in their paper: "they eat not much, they take up very little disk space, so you will still under your weight limit, they can easily active...." "You don't get bored and tear the joint." In short, make "Snails great little astronauts".
Snails have a very similar mechanism for balance and motion detection. People have a fully functional vestibular system in the ears, but something called a Scatocyst snails. It is a small piece of calcium carbonate in the screw, which moves around as the worm changes the alignment. This change is woloskami called setae that then the brain signal so that the worm can align themselves recognized on gravity.
It is only natural, given the similar mechanism, issues, such as snails respond not only in the microgravity of space, and this is what sets out the United States / Russian team to learn. She sent a few snails, half in the room for a bit and the other half earthbound as kept.
If the space bound snails, returned they put both groups on a wire mesh and tilted it 180 Grad--pretty much what happens in nature, if a worm, the sheet bend weight, it its way along oozing has. The leaf is that change of orientation is detected by the Scatocyst and the snail knows itself to making retreat before it.
The scientists found that the snails, which reoriented and turned in the space itself had been faster than the terrestrial snails is much more. Apparently so, because their setae were much faster to changed orientation, i.e., respond is that mesh screen was tilted. (, That answer by sticking electrodes in the arms of worm-has been measured there is no such thing as a mollusk Geneva Convention?)
To find out the mechanism, the team of researchers took a page from the NASA playback: they put the space slugs in a centrifuge. I have Scicurious what they found together:
When she saw gene expression, room had the snails receptors, which suggests a protein that, when the cells by the calcium carbonate against them covered, indicating that stimulating the inclination of the screw under "Load" more hPEP in their Statocyste. The snails space had more stain, pointed out that she had reviewed a lot of "Tilt" in the region. And so may be more sensitive to more tilt.
In humans, the adaptation to the space and microgravity results in so-called space adaptation syndrome, which looks a lot like motion sickness. Only in the area. If they come back to Earth, they have to get used to gravity, and a further adaptation, readjustment, the constant feeling of your feet is to take down. It seems that snails do this also, but there is no record of whether the snails the bad side effects of your customizations got.... It looks like exposure to microgravity in snails of Statocysts (the Gravireceptors) in direction makes more sensitive to changes.
So guess I snails are not the worst possible astronauts in the Animal Kingdom. You are probably better than cats:
Image credit: iStock
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