Breakthrough As Chinese Scientists Grow Embryo In Space

Part of the SJ-10 retrievable satellite, which China sent into orbit on April 6, was picked up in inner Mongolia on Sunday with some groundbreaking and hopeful news; mammalian embryos can be grown in space.

“We sent them up at the two-cell stage, and now they have developed into the blastocyst stage — the two cells developed into four, and then into eight, sixteen, and eventually reaching blastocyst — a whole stage of early embryonic development. The work had never been tried successfully before,” China Radio International reported Duan Enkui, who is a Professor of the Institute of Zoology affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences as saying.

Gizmodo also quoted Duan Enkui, who also happens to be a principle researcher of the experiment as saying, “the human race may still have a long way to go before we can colonize space. But before that, we have to figure out whether it is possible for us to survive and reproduce in the outer space environment like we do on Earth. Now, we finally proved that the most crucial step in our reproduction – the early embryo development – is possible in outer space.”

China Daily reported that the entire process of turning the two-celled embryo’s into blastocysts happened roughly 80 hours after take off, and that after four days of being in space many of the blastocysts had matured. There were 6,000 embryo’s in the satellites chamber, and pictures were taken every 4 hours.

China reports world's 1st successful #mammal embryo development test in space @nature https://t.co/XdYxmtWgA8 pic.twitter.com/Ru0nREctiR

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 17, 2016

The re-entry capsule of China's first retrievable microgravity satellite, SJ-10, returned safely to Earth on Monday pic.twitter.com/10oOOo4Ymb

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 18, 2016

This was not the first time that China has sent embryos into space. Back in 2006, the country launched the SJ-8, which also housed mouse embryos, though failed to see any development during their time in low earth orbit.

Previous attempts by other countries at growing embryos in space have failed, as The Daily Mail says that in 1996 NASA tried an experiment where they brought their own mouse embryos onto the Columbia space shuttle, but once exposed to micro gravity, all of the embryos stopped growing. The fear was that gravity may be needed in order to complete certain stages of embryonic development.

China.org — in a different article — reported that the SJ-10 capsule contained information not only on the experiment about the growth of embryos in space but also data pertaining to an array of different areas of study, including an experiment about “space radiation’s effect on the genetic stability of fruit flies and rat cells.”

The GB Times reported that some of the other 17 experiments had to do with finding out why astronauts experience bone loss while in space, fluid physics and combustion within micro gravity, and the soret coefficient in crude oil experiment, which “is designed to sharpen understanding of deep crude oil reservoirs around 4km underground,” said Antonio Verga, who is a technical officer on the project.

While there is still much to be discovered and undoubtedly more data for scientists to pour through, the discovery that a mammalian embryo can be grown in space is fantastic news not only for organizations like Mars One — a Dutch company made famous by their bold open online enrollment for possible candidacy in a manned Mars mission by 2026–, but also for the continued existence of the human race.

Upon retrieving the rest of the satellite in the coming days, the team of researchers will be able to give more detailed information about their findings, including those in other experiments we may not have heard as much about.

[Photo by China Photos/Getty Images]