How Tiny Worms Could Help Humans Colonize Mars

Pierre Bezukhov writes "The roundworm has about 20,000 protein-coding genes — nearly as many as humans, who have about 23,000. Furthermore, there is a lot of overlap between our genome and theirs, with many genes performing roughly the same functions in both species. Launching C. elegans roundworms to Mars would allow scientists to see just how dangerous the high radiation levels found in deep space — and on the Red Planet's surface — are to animal life. 'Worms allow us to detect changes in growth, development, reproduction and behavior in response to environmental conditions such as toxins or in response to deep space missions,' said Nathaniel Szewczyk of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. 'Given the high failure rate of Mars missions, use of worms allows us to safely and relatively cheaply test spacecraft systems prior to manned missions,' he adds."

Comments

Not the best model for radiation

[Samantha Wright]

There's a reason C. elegans isn't used in basic cell cycle research as much as yeast. It doesn't continually replace its cells at maturity. Consequentially, DNA-damaging environmental conditions have a much lower chance of affecting them at maturity than humans.

Re:Not the best model for radiation

[crakbone]

The ISS is behind the Van Allen Belt and protected from a large amount of cosmic radiation by it.

Re:Not the best model for radiation

[Nidi62]

GP in first sentence says yeast is better than C.elegans. So I say send a beer to Mars, say a nice Belgian Trappist Ale.

And you can send a few cans of Bud Light to see how the trip would affect water.