Worm grows two heads after five weeks in space

Scientists study how absence of gravity affects worms

Washington: In a first, an amputated worm regenerated into a double-head creature after spending five weeks aboard the International Space Station (ISS), scientists said.

Flatworms in space are helping researchers to study how an absence of normal gravity and geomagnetic fields can have anatomical, behavioural, and bacteriological consequences.

The research has implications for human and animal space travellers and for regenerative and bioengineering science.

Researchers, including those from Tufts University in the US, sought to determine how microgravity and micro-geomagnetic fields would affect the growth and regeneration of planarian flatworms (D japonica).

They discovered that one of the amputated fragments sent to space regenerated into a double-headed worm. In more than 18 years of maintaining a colony of D japonica that involves more than 15,000 control worms in just the last five years alone, researchers have never observed a spontaneous occurrence of double-headedness. When they amputated both heads from the space-exposed worm, the headless middle fragment regenerated into a double-headed worm, demonstrating that the body plan modification that occurred in the worm was permanent.

“During regeneration, development and cancer suppression, body patterning is subject to the influence of physical forces, such as electric fields, magnetic fields, electromagnetic fields, and other biophysical factors,” said Michael Levin, professor at Tufts University. “As humans transition toward becoming a space-faring species, it is important that we deduce the impact of space flight on regenerative health for the sake of medicine and the future of space laboratory research,” said Junji Morokuma, research associate in Levin’s lab.