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EARTHDATE: May 29, 2011

Official News page 4


REAL LIFE NEWS: SQUID... IN... SPAAAAACE

by Hazed

Last week it was microscopic water bears in space, this week it's squid in space. No, in case you are thinking that astronauts are set to chow down on calamares, these squid are not for eating, they are for experimenting on.

The squid will be carried into orbit in the space shuttle, and then killed. Poor squid. This callous behavior does have a point to it - it is to help us understand how "good" bacteria behave in microgravity. Jamie Foster of the University of Florida in Gainesville said they want to answer the question, "Do good bacteria go bad?"

We already know that being in space can make disease microbes more deadly. Five years ago, Salmonella bacteria sent up in the space shuttle grew faster and were almost three times as likely to kill mice after their spacetrip. But now scientists want to know whether good bacteria, as well as harmful, is affected.

So why the squid? It's because a Pacific species called the bobtail squid carries a cargo of good bacteria which colonize the baby squid soon after they hatch, setting up home in their light organs. The squid use the bacteria to generate light, which they shine downwards, ensuring they don't cast a visible shadow - helping them to stay safe from predators.

So the good bacteria and the squid work in cooperation, which is called mutualism. Humans have good bacteria as well, lots of it, thousands of different species, but that makes them too complex to study. The squid have just one so they fit the bill for this kind of experiment. Besides, you couldn't really take a human into space and then kill it!

In the experiment, newly hatched squid that have not yet encountered their bacterial partners will be sent into space in tubes of seawater. Fourteen hours after launch, an astronaut will add the bacteria. After 28 hours they should have colonized the squid, at which point, the unfortunate cephalopod will be killed and fixed solid, then brought back to Earth to be examined.

The whole point of this is that if the squid's bacteria does show any changes from being in space, it implies that human's friendly bacteria could also affected by space. If that's the case it might be one more thing for astronauts to worry about.

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20474-squid-go-into-space--for-the-sake-of-humanity.html


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