The Japanese research team cultivated mouse blastocysts in space for the first time
CTOnews.com, Oct. 30 (Xinhua)-- A team of researchers at Yamanashi University in Japan successfully cultured a fertilized mouse egg into a blastocyst on the International Space Station, Japan News reported. Blastocyst refers to the internal production of blastocyst fluid, blastocyst cavity of the embryo, all the cells in the blastocyst did not begin to differentiate, after this stage the embryo began to differentiate.
The study, published online in the journal iScience, showed that 720 two-cell frozen mouse embryos were sent to the International Space Station, using a device developed by the team that allows astronauts to easily process early mouse embryos. The team thawed and cultured the embryos for four days.
360 of the embryos were cultured in a device in the Japanese hope module that could produce the same 1G gravity as Earth. The remaining 360 embryos were cultured in zero gravity environment. The embryos were then fixed in formalin and sent back to Earth for comparison with embryos similarly tested on Earth.
More than 60% of the embryos in the earth test developed into blastocysts, compared with 29.5% in 1G gravity and 23.6% in zero gravity. "We found that embryos can normally develop to the blastocyst stage even under zero gravity," said Ruoyama, a professor at Yamanashi University. as far as mammals are concerned, we need to check whether they can implant and grow correctly. "
CTOnews.com noted that the experiment found that the differentiation, DNA damage rate and gene expression of blastocysts developed in zero gravity were not different from those in other environments.
