ASGSB 1998 Annual Meeting Abstracts

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EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF MICE EMBRYO IN MICROGRAVITY ENVIRONMENT ON STS-80 SPACE FLIGHT.    E.B. Schenker¹ and K.E. Forkheim². ¹Israeli Aerospace Medicine Institute, POB 4572 Jerusalem, ISRAEL and ²University of Manitoba, Faculty of Medicine, Manitoba, Canada.

During the STS-80 Columbia space flight missions, forty-nine mice embryos at the two cell stage were launched on the CMIX-5 Payload of ITA Inc. The Mammalian mice embryos were allowed to develop in microgravity in a Liquid Mixing Apparatus as part of CMIX-5 Payload. They developed for four days at 37 C and were compared to 2-cell stage embryos exposed to 1g on Earth treated in a similar manner.

Thirty-seven of the fifty ground control 2-cell embryos divided to 4- and 8-cell stages. Eleven of the fifty ground control 2-cell embryos reached the hatching stage. In the space flight group none of the forty-nine, space flight embryos at the 2-cell stage showed any sign of development and all of the embryos degenerated.

Conclusion: At this stage we can not conclude that mammalian mice embryos can not develop due to microgravity alone. Future studies will have to be conducted to evaluate why the 2-cell mice embryos did not develop. Other possible contributing factors may include: cosmic radiation, vibration during space flight, and other space environmental factors.

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