Creature Survives Naked in Space

This article pertains to the SNBAL discussed in lab today. It's about these tiny bug like creatures called "water bears" which are very similar to sea monkeys. The big deal about them is that the ESA (The European version of NASA) shipped them off in a space capsule in September of 2007 and exposed them to the vacuum and radiation of space. Surprisingly most of them survived the vacuum and cosmic rays but even more unbelievable was the fact that some still survived the solar UV radiation which is 1,000 times more powerful than on Earth. It is already known that the water bears posses a special ability that when there is no water present around them, they go into a short of hibernation, except that they actually turn off all cellular activity and esentually could be considered dead. What was more astonishing was the fact that they were able to survive such intense solar UV radiation. Once home on Earth, they functioned and reproduced normally.

The reason why this is important to physiology is if we can figure out how these water bears survived such intense radiation, we may be able to implement it in cancer treatments or even could use it in a future Mars mission to protect the astronauts. Some scientists involved in the experiment think that although the water bears survived they may have still suffered extreme DNA damage. Which means that they may have a unique super ability or protein in their cells which watches the DNA more closely or better than the human counterpart. If this protein is found it could easily extend the life of humans many more years by protecting the DNA in our cells.

Picture Credit: Rick Gillis and Roger J. Haro, Department of Biology, University of Wisconsin - La Crosse

http://www.livescience.com/space/080908-space-creature.html