Hayes NL, Nowakowski RS.
Abstr Soc Neurosci. 1999; 25 Pt 1: 256.
Dept. of Neurosci. and Cell Biol., UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical Sch., Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
The weightlessness of space flight results in an absence of buoyancy and a resultant loss of convection currents. We have evaluated quantitatively the effects of the loss of gravity on the developing cells of the mouse telencephalon by comparing the brains of fetal mice which developed on Earth with comparably staged fetuses that experienced between 2 and 5 days of weightlessness on the Space Shuttle Columbia. Pregnant mice in space and controls on earth were injected first with tritiated thymidine and then after 2 hours with bromodeoxyuridine; after an additional 0.5 hr fetuses were collected by hysterotomy and fixed by immersion in 4% paraformaldehyde. After 3 days at 4 degrees C the tissue was transferred to 70% ethanol and returned to storage at 4 degrees C until landing. Fetuses were then embedded in paraffin, sectioned at 4 micrometers, and processed for the immunohistochemical demonstration of bromodeoxyuridine and autoradiographic demonstration of tritiated thymidine. The results show that in developing neocortical proliferative zones cell number is slightly increased, the cell cycle is slightly shortened, and tritiated thymidine remains available for a longer time. In addition, we found a reduced amount of apoptotic cell death in the whole telencephalon. Thus, we suggest that intra- and inter-cellular convection currents play a physiological role in the regulation of normal cell functions.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Animals
- Brain
- Bromodeoxyuridine
- Cell Cycle
- Cell Death
- Cell Division
- Cell Proliferation
- Ethanol
- Female
- Fetus
- Gravitation
- Mice
- Space Flight
- Telencephalon
- Weightlessness
- genetics
- metabolism
- NASA Discipline Developmental Biology
- NASA Experiment Number 9301093
- Non-NASA Center
Other ID:
UI: 102194972
From Meeting Abstracts