Space Mice Could Potentially Be Hurt By Words (they have thin skin)

[draugur]

[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32886001[/url]
[url]http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/npjmgrav.2015.2[/url]

[quote]
Results:
A significant reduction of dermal thickness (−15%, P=0.05) was observed in S mice accompanied by an increased newly synthetized procollagen (+42%, P=0.03), likely reflecting an increased collagen turnover. Transcriptomic data suggested that the dermal atrophy might be related to an early degradation of defective newly formed procollagen molecules. Interestingly, numerous hair follicles in growing anagen phase were observed in the three S mice, validated by a high expression of specific hair follicles genes, while only one mouse in the G controls showed growing hairs. By microarray analysis of whole thickness skin, we observed a significant modulation of 434 genes in S versus G mice. A large proportion of the upregulated transcripts encoded proteins related to striated muscle homeostasis.

Conclusions:
These data suggest that a prolonged exposure to space conditions may induce skin atrophy, deregulate hair follicle cycle, and markedly affect the transcriptomic repertoire of the cutaneous striated muscle panniculus carnosus.
[/quote]

Basically, another horrible side effect of living long term in micro gravity happens to be thinner skin because procollagen molecules don't form right in micro gravity, since procollagen is basically the base template for a good many proteins in the body, this is very bad news. procollagen is the precursor to collagen (names sure are great), which is the most common protein in the body as well.

[Nebukadnezzer]

Could supplements fix this? Or time on a centrifugal artificial gravity device/chamber?

[draugur]

Too early to know for sure but I'd guess time in artificial gravity would help slow the process at the least. I'm not a biologist or anything though so I have no clue.

Edit: How is this late? It wasn't posted previously to my knowledge and the article is from today and the actual study paper was only published today as well.

[TheTalon]

Imagine if we sent people to our nearest star. By the time they got there, they would have practically evolved into a new species because of the environment and time it took to get there

[GarrettFox]

[QUOTE=TheTalon;47821204]Imagine if we sent people to our nearest star. By the time they got there, they would have practically evolved into a new species because of the environment and time it took to get there[/QUOTE]

Not how that works.

[Karmah]

[QUOTE=TheTalon;47821204]Imagine if we sent people to our nearest star. By the time they got there, they would have practically evolved into a new species because of the environment and time it took to get there[/QUOTE]

if the vessel was a fuckin planet, and the only predator was the sun.

Species don't just evolve over time for no reason - they need death. Those who some how survive the most will "spread" the most.
The only thing your proposal would do is select against cancer, and even then those humans would most likely still be human enough to reproduce with the humans of today - providing they didn't incur a shitload of mutations along the way

[Download]

[QUOTE=draugur;47821073]Too early to know for sure but I'd guess time in artificial gravity would help slow the process at the least. I'm not a biologist or anything though so I have no clue.

Edit: How is this late? It wasn't posted previously to my knowledge and the article is from today and the actual study paper was only published today as well.[/QUOTE]

The cells in the human body wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'fake' gravity caused by centripetal force and 'real' gravity caused by mass.

[draugur]

[QUOTE=download;47821876]The cells in the human body wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'fake' gravity caused by centripetal force and 'real' gravity caused by mass.[/QUOTE]

Valid point. This is assuming that it's only gravity at work here instead of other possible factors along with it though. We don't know enough yet since the sample group is only 3 mice.

[Nerts]

[QUOTE=TheTalon;47821204]Imagine if we sent people to our nearest star. By the time they got there, they would have practically evolved into a new species because of the environment and time it took to get there[/QUOTE]

No, they'd just be deformed humans.

[Conely]

[QUOTE=Rents;47823530]No, they'd just be deformed humans.[/QUOTE]

"Now, behold with your simple, [I]mortal[/I] eyes... THE NEXT STAGE OF [B]HUMANITY ITSELF[/B]!"

*pulls back a curtain, revealing a dude with rickets*

[NeverGoWest]

Holy shit this is just like the "space worms" in that novel I wrote back in late primary school.

Basically starships travelling for thousands of years carrying people on board, the richer aristocrats lived in artificial climates in large centrifugal devices, but the workers/slaves who maintained these starships/stardrifters? They basically turned into snake/worm-like defects that crawled through zero-g maintenance tunnels welding shit together.

This is even more horrible, wouldnt the atrophy eventually result in skinless, boneless husks even if the astronauts were to survive otherwise?

[alxnotorious]

[QUOTE=draugur;47820637]
Basically, another horrible side effect of living long term in micro gravity happens to be thinner skin because procollagen molecules don't form right in micro gravity, since procollagen is basically the base template for a good many proteins in the body, this is very bad news. procollagen is the precursor to collagen (names sure are great), which is the most common protein in the body as well.[/QUOTE]

Also you lose your hair.

[Nerts]

[QUOTE=NeverGoWest;47823618]Holy shit this is just like the "space worms" in that novel I wrote back in late primary school.

Basically starships travelling for thousands of years carrying people on board, the richer aristocrats lived in artificial climates in large centrifugal devices, but the workers/slaves who maintained these starships/stardrifters? They basically turned into snake/worm-like defects that crawled through zero-g maintenance tunnels welding shit together.

This is even more horrible, wouldnt the atrophy eventually result in skinless, boneless husks even if the astronauts were to survive otherwise?[/QUOTE]

Nah, you'd probably be at more risk of muscular and skeletal disorders, but you'd probably be fine until you tried to adjust to gravity.

[Missing User]

Any pictures of these mice?

[Sableye]

We should really launch some artificial gravity habitat to the ISS sometime soon though, its a growing pile of "stuff" that centrifugal gravity is supposed to fix while nobody has demonstrated at all if its a viable replacement or if the coreolis effect has some unpredicted side effects on molecular formation

[FlandersNed]

I think this will affect how a Mars Mission will operates even though comparatively it's nowhere near the same length of time. Add that to the list of complications that arise with a 6-8 month Earth-Mars transit time.

[draugur]

[QUOTE=FlandersNed;47824212]I think this will affect how a Mars Mission will operates even though comparatively it's nowhere near the same length of time. Add that to the list of complications that arise with a 6-8 month Earth-Mars transit time.[/QUOTE]

You also have to account for the effect this will have on colonization efforts onto bodies with less gravity than Earth. We still don't know if this effect would persist, or at least be concerning in any place but the micro gravity of orbit/raw space.

[Mellowbloom]

my space RPGs always told me people from space had less health