Hugh Pickens writes "Studies of multiplication in space have back when been carried out with sea urchins, fish, amphibians and birds, but Brandon Keim writes in Wired that plunge bath biologists have discovered that despite mammalian fertilization may take place commonly in space, as mouse embryos develop in microgravity their cells have trouble dividing and maturing. The researchers artificially fertilized mouse eggs with sperm that had been stored inside a three-dimensional clinostat, a machine that mimics weightlessness by rotating objects in such a way that the effects of gravity are spread in every direction. Some embryos were finally implanted in female mice and survived to a healthy birth, but at lower numbers than a regular-gravity control group. Part of the divarication could be the result of playing tricky procedures on subtle cells, but the researchers suspect they also reflect the effect of a low-gravity terrain on cellular processes that evolved for Earth-specific physics. '"These results suggest for the first time that fertilization can occur generally under G surroundings in a mammal, but normal preimplantation embryo progress might require 1G," concludes the report. "Sustaining life beyond Earth either on space stations or on other planets will require a clear intellect of how the space domain affects key phases of mammalian reproduction."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More: - From the site

Mark