NEW SCIENTIST (London, UK) 05 January 09 Space experiment has a sting in the tail for newts
Spending time in zero gravity could hinder human growth - if we are anything like newts, that is.
Eduardo Almeida of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and his team cut the tails off 16 newts (Pleurodeles waltl) before sending them into space. While the tails did regrow, as they do on Earth, they were less than half as long as normal.
"This is important evidence that regeneration does not occur at a normal rate in space," says Almeida, who presented the results at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in San Francisco last month.
He believes gravity activates signals that tell cells to divide. As humans may suffer if it is absent, this needs to be resolved before considering life in space, he says.
From issue 2689 of New Scientist magazine, page 12.
Space experiment has a sting in the tail for newts

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