Mice in Space

It may not look like much, but the green blob on the right has travelled further than most of us ever will. It's the thymus from a mouse that went on the final flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis – the historic last mission for the US shuttle programme. Based on studies of mice on previous flights, researchers suspected that space travel might affect the thymus, an important part of the immune system, but it's not possible to take body parts out of astronauts to look in detail at them. The scientists discovered higher levels of broken DNA in the mouse's thymus after a 13-day trip on the shuttle, highlighted by a green stain that detects DNA damage, compared to the thymus of an earth-bound counterpart (left-hand panel). This damage could affect the immune system and needs to be taken into account as we start to explore the universe.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image by Daila S. Gridley
• Loma Linda University, USA
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence
• Research published in PLOS ONE, September 2013