ASGSB 1998 Annual Meeting Abstracts

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EFFECTS OF MICROGRAVITY ON EMBRYONIC QUAIL EYE DEVELOPMENT.   J.E.Barrett¹, D.C.Wells², A.Q.Paulsen², and G.W.Conrad². ¹NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA; ²Division of Biology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-4901.

Fertilized Japanese quail embryos were incubated aboard Mir for selected periods of development. Eyes from Embryonic Days 14 and 16 (E14 and E16) Flight embryos were compared with eyes from control embryos incubated on Earth. Measurements were recorded for eye weights, for eye, corneal and scleral ring diameters, and for numbers of bones in scleral ossicle rings. Transparency of E16 corneas was documented, immunohistochemical staining was performed to observe corneal innervation, and corneal substructure was observed at the electron microscope level. Except for corneal diameter of Flight embryos compared with that of one of the sets of controls, results indicate that eye development occurred normally in microgravity. Quality of tissue fixation in the Flight and various matching control groups was unsatisfactory, and precluded ultrastructure and neural immunohistochemical analyses. (Supported by NASA grants NAG 2-1005 to G.W.C and NAGW-2328 to B. Spooner.)

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