Mouse sperm on the ISS survives for almost six years, produces healthy space pups:
The most well-travelled mouse sperm in history left the Earth in 2013 on a return journey to the International Space Station (ISS). After spending almost six years on the station, the freeze-dried sperm were returned to Earth in a SpaceX cargo capsule in 2019 and used to breed litters of healthy "space pups."
The study, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, details the space sperm experiments, which were conducted by a team of Japanese researchers aiming to understand the long term effects of space radiation on mammalian sperm. The freeze-dried sperm were sent to the ISS and spent nearly six years on the orbital laboratory, which zips around the Earth at a distance of around 250 miles.
[...] What did the researchers do? The researchers collected sperm from male mice and placed them in ampules -- small glass vials -- before freeze-drying them to remove all the water. They stored the freeze-dried (FD) sperm on both the International Space Station and, in parallel, in freezers on Earth. Some sperm were returned after nine months on the ISS, to test everything was working as planned, but two other groups of samples spent 1010 and 2129 days on the station.
Once returned, the sperm were rehydrated and a type of mouse IVF was performed to impregnate female mice with space sperm and Earth sperm. Females then delivered their litters and the space pups were compared to "ground control" pups.
"Space pups did not show any differences compared to the ground control pups, and their next generation also had no abnormalities," the team wrote.
The researchers also assessed whether the space sperm differed to the sperm stored on Earth by examining damage to their DNA and gene expression. Under a microscope, space sperm looked identical to those from Earth and the team also report no extra DNA damage occurred to space sperm exposed to radiation. Gene expression profiles were unchanged.
Journal Reference:
Sayaka Wakayama, Daiyu Ito, Yuko Kamada, et al. Evaluating the long-term effect of space radiation on the reproductive normality of mammalian sperm preserved on the International Space Station [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg5554)
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12 2021, @08:38PM (1 child)
It's *hydrated* DNA that gets damaged by rays in space. All they've proven is that if we freeze-dry astronauts, they can still have children when they return to Earth and get rehydrated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12 2021, @10:28PM
all they've proven is that you could freeze-dry astroNUTS, they don't need the whole astronaut.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Fnord666 on Saturday June 12 2021, @08:50PM (2 children)
"Oh, so you're an intern at the lab. What do you do there?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12 2021, @09:12PM
If you trust interns to do it, you'll end up with mutant mouse-human hybrids. Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13 2021, @12:10AM
Try "I work for SN for living."
Hah.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday June 12 2021, @08:51PM (1 child)
Things learned today -- mice babies are called puppies. One wonders if there shouldn't be more disappointed children around asking for them ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13 2021, @02:57AM
Not as disappointed as when I roll up outside their school in a white van and show these THESE puppies.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday June 12 2021, @10:54PM
FTFY
A few things that pop to mind reading this.
They didn't sequence the full DNA of the re hydrated samples looking for errors/mutations. The just re hydrated the samples and knocked up some lady mice, then compared the resulting offspring to those of the control group. And then let another generation happen to look for obvious anomalies, tumors, missing/extra limbs, etc.
They have proved nothing of value.
Did they bother to check how many fertilized eggs resulted in healthy pups? probably not. Its a well know fact that a fertilized egg that has any kind of fucked up genes usually doesn't even make it past the first week before spontaneously aborting. So even though the pups that actually managed to be born didn't appear to have any issues there was still an unknown amount of the sperm used that was probably damaged severely.
Now what was impressive was that another team did something similar with tardigrades and they didn't show any anomalies. Complex multi-cellular living creatures, not tiny single "half" cells that can barely be defined as "living" to begin with.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."