Feb 1, 17 / Pis 04, 01 23:36 UTC

Your DNA in space  

I just read this article and thought it may be of interest to those on this forum.

NASA: Space Alters Your DNA In Bizarre Ways

UPROXX
Dan Seitz UPROXXJanuary 31, 2017

Does going into space fundamentally change our biology? It’s not a casual question. Human beings evolved to live in a very specific ecological niche, and no matter how tough DNA is, nature never planned for us to sit on a pile of explosives and fling ourselves into an airless void full of rocks and ionizing radiation. So NASA took a rare opportunity, using twin astronauts, to study how being in space affects our genome. And there are some strange results for scientists to chew over.

Scott and Mark Kelly, identical twins, participated in a study in which Scott spent a year in space while Mark stayed on Earth. NASA collected blood and other tissue samples and is still running a battery of tests on everything from gut flora to genetic variance, but the preliminary results are in and there’s a lot to think about. For example, it was theorized that being in space for long periods of time would shorten your telomeres, which “cap” your chromosomes and prevent genetic damage. Instead, they lengthened while in space, and returned to normal fairly quickly when he came back to Earth.

DNA methylation, meanwhile, a way for your body to control DNA activity without changing your DNA sequence, went down in Scott, but up in Mark. Gene expression signatures were also different, but that tends to reflect your lifestyle, so right now, that’s being chalked up to an astronaut’s life of freeze-dried food and no sleep.

What does this mean for space travel and potentially going to Mars? Right now, we’re still figuring that out, although it seems all but inevitable that this will mean more rigorous medical testing will need to be done, and we may need to work out the long term consequences. One thing is clear, though: the longer you’re in space, the more it changes your body.

(Via New Atlas)

Feb 2, 17 / Pis 05, 01 15:33 UTC

What it means is you need better radiation shielding and more than microgravity. Then it doens't matter how long your're up there. As we've evolved to suit a particular environment, then engineering and maintaining that exact environment should mitiagte any issues caused by.

  Updated  on Feb 2, 17 / Pis 05, 01 15:33 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time
Reason: typo

Feb 5, 17 / Pis 08, 01 15:38 UTC

@@ What it means is you need better radiation shielding and more than microgravity. Then it doens't matter how long your're up there. As we've evolved to suit a particular environment, then engineering and maintaining that exact environment should mitiagte any issues caused by. @@

Or we need to modify our genes in a certain way, to be less sensitive to ionization radiation and low gravity. Here we can find some useful information studying genome of Tardigrades for example.

Feb 5, 17 / Pis 08, 01 19:06 UTC

I wasn't aware that tardigrades were radiation resistant. Would of thought they'd be lacking density to resist alpha let alone beta or gamma.

The issues with radiation and DNA is the radioactive particles output literally smashes it to bits. There's no real way to mitigate this. Once a single fragment is damaged then any further replication - if that's still possible - contains this damage and the next particle collision degrades it more. It's a cumulative effect with no "rewind". You might be able to reduce this via genetic means if you modify the organism to have an exoskeleton of sufficient density. Then you have to start questioning if they're still human tho.

All in all it's far easier - and far more sane - to simply modify the environment to suit.

Mar 24, 17 / Ari 27, 01 10:55 UTC

Not entirely a "cure" but http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30246-5 might be able to reduce the impact to the effects.

Jun 18, 17 / Leo 01, 01 06:03 UTC

Your DNA is changing everytime ,bro.Even you put a phone in your bag will change your DNA.The Ionizing radiation is the thing that need to be worried.The small change of your DNA isnt the thing need to be worried.Your body will FIX it.BIG change will make you death ON TIME.But all this change is a matter of Probability.The longgest time lived in space is an american.He stay in ISS near 1 year.But we didnt see any change by eyes(yes,he is younger than earth).Yes, from the history , these spaceman's death most is caused by cancer is truth.But cancer is Curable in the future.