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Call of Duty:AW DNA Bomb!
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Call of Duty:AW DNA Bomb! - Video

Genetic blueprints attached to a rocket survived a short spaceflight and later passed on their biological instructions

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If a cascade of meteors struck Earth billions of years ago, could they have deposited genetic blueprints and forged an indelible link between Earth and another planet? Perhaps. Although that puzzling question remains unanswered, scientists have uncovered a new clue that suggests it is possible for DNA to withstand the extreme heat and pressure it would encounter when entering our atmosphere from space. In a new study published today in PLOS ONE, a team of Swiss and German scientists report that they dotted the exterior grooves of a rocket with fragments of DNA to test the genetic materials stability in space. Surprisingly, they discovered that some of those building blocks of life remained intact during the hostile conditions of the flight and could pass on genetic information even after exiting and reentering the atmosphere during a roughly 13-minute round trip into space. The findings suggest that if DNA traveled through space on meteorites, it could have conceivably survived, says lead author Oliver Ullrich of the University of Zurich. Moreover, he says, DNA attached to a spacecraft has the potential to contaminate other celestial bodies, making it difficult to determine whether a life form existed on another planet or was introduced there by spacecraft. The rocket test may fall short of representing the faster speed and higher energy of a meteor hurtling into our atmosphere, but it does suggest that even if the outside of a meteor was scorched, genetic material in certain places on the meteor could survive higher temperatures than scientists had previously realized and make it to Earth. The findings are a stop on the way to understanding what the limits are for DNAs survival, says research scientist Christopher Carr of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved with the work but called the results provocative. The next steps, he says, would be to further pin down what temperature and pressure would ultimately kill DNA. To test the effect of the hostile reentry conditions, Ullrichs team embedded specially designed plasmid DNA a circular thread of DNA that would not function if it were damaged and lost its loop shape along the exterior of the craft in grooves and in the indentations of screw heads. Temperatures on the exterior of the rocket reached as high as 115.4 degrees Celsius during liftoff and 128.3 degrees Celsius during atmospheric reentry (by comparison, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius). Still, the plasmid DNA survived. The researchers were intrigued to find that the DNA looked intact under a microscope. They also put some of the samples to work to see if the DNA remained functionally capable of passing on genetic instructions. The team exposed Escherichia coli bacteria to the space-traveling DNA. If the plasmid DNA were intact as it proved to be the E. coli would be able to take up the DNA, and that piece of genetic code would make the bacteria resistant to antibiotics. According to Ullrich, the researchers were surprised to find that the DNA passed on its information and the E. coli became drug resistant. The findings are definitely exciting, Carr says. Earlier work had already revealed that certain bacteria could survive in space for prolonged periods despite intense ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, especially when they were partly shielded from such harmful rays by natural protectants like biofilm. Although those experiments suggested that certain hardy microbes could survive at least 1.5 years in space, there has been no firm evidence that DNA could also survive reentry. In fact, in earlier experiments, bacteria and fungi did not survive after being embedded in rock samples mounted on the outside of a capsule and shot into space. The die-off in those experiments was due to damage on the DNA level, Ullrichs team notes. The difference in this new work, Ullrich says, may have been the modicum of protection the DNA had due to its placement in grooves or screw heads. In the earlier experiments, reentry conditions had very high velocities and temperatures, and the protective layer from surrounding rocks was likely too thin to protect the microorganisms, he says. Indeed, researchers have never seen DNA survive reentry into the atmosphere until now, although one study did find that bacteria survived the reentry, disintegration and impact of the space shuttle Columbia. This first evidence of plasmid DNAs survival also suggests that in the future, DNA tests could be considered as a standard for measuring the effectiveness of decontamination procedures used in space programs. Returning spacecraft are routinely cleaned to protect Earth against the possibility of accidental contact with alien microbes. In the larger picture, Carr says, the new study gets us thinking what controlled experiments we should do to explore the limit for life and what the limit is for DNA.

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DNA Can Survive Reentry from Space

The substance that holds the code for life may be able to survive a short ride in space, a new study suggests.

Samples of DNA squirted onto the exterior of a TEXUS-49 sounding rocket remained functional following a 13-minute suborbital spaceflight, the study's scientists report.

"We were totally surprised. ... Our findings made us a little bit worried about the probability of contaminating spacecrafts, landers and landing sites with DNA from Earth," Cora Thiel, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich and a lead author of the study, said in a statement. [How to Protect Other Planets from Earth Microbes]

A TEXUS-49 rocket lifts off from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, northern Sweden, carrying plasmid DNA on its exterior. Scientists were surprised to find that the DNA survived the 13-minute flight.

Thiel conducted the experiment along with Oliver Ullrich, a biochemist at the University of Zurich as well as the University of Magdeburg in Germany.

Thiel and Ullrich put an experiment inside the payload bay of a TEXUS-49 rocket set for launch from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna in northern Sweden, to study the effect of weightlessness on DNA and its ability to function.

During flight preparations, Thiel and Ullrich decided to put some DNA on the exterior of the rocket as well: around the outside of the payload, in the grooves of the screw heads, and underneath the payload. When the rocket returned, the researchers found at least a small amount of DNA in all three locations. They said as much as a third of the DNA was still functional.

The DNA used in the experiment was not chromosomal DNA the kind found in humans and most living organisms but rather plasmid DNA, which is found in some bacteria and operates slightly differently than chromosomal DNA. Plasmid DNA is around 10 times smaller than bacterial chromosomal DNA, Ullrich said.

"We cannot say how these big chromosomal DNA molecules would react under the same conditions, and this should be investigated in a separate experiment," Ullrich told Space.com in an email. "However, we speculate that small plasmid DNA molecules might be more resistant to re-entry conditions than chromosomal DNA, which is also packed with proteins."

The study was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

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Space Surprise! DNA Survives Trip on a Rocket's Surface

DNA molecules smeared onto the exterior of a sub-orbital test rocket are capable of surviving a 13-minute trip into space and a scorching re-entry, European researchers say.

The scientists' surprising finding, which was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, suggests that genetic material is hardier than previously thought and may have the potential to stow away on robotic landers bound for other worlds, or within meteors, the report said.

"It is conceivable that life exists independently from our planet even under the very hostile conditions prevailing on our neighbors like Mars," wrote senior study author Dr. Oliver Ullrich, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich, and his colleagues.

"Already on Earth we are able to identify some extreme life forms which can survive physically and/or geochemically harsh conditions, such as very high or low temperatures, intense radiation, pressure, vacuum, desiccation, salinity and pH. Many of these parameters also prevail in space and therefore the question is whether terrestrial organisms are able to survive a voyage through space."

The experiment was conducted on the TEXUS-49 rocket mission that blasted off from Sweden in March 2011. The launch was part of a sounding rocket program in which instruments and experiments are launched into sub-orbital space for brief periods.

Researchers engineered plasmid DNA, or small ring-like strings of genetic material, that would confer special qualities to transfected cells, such as making bacteria resistant to certain antibiotics or making mouse tissue cells glow under ultraviolet light.

By engineering the plasmid DNA in this way, they would be able to see whether it was still functional when the rocket returned to Earth.

The researchers applied the DNA to various locations on the exterior of the rocket, including a number of screw heads. During the experimental flight, the material was lofted 166 miles high and subjected to 6.3 G's of thrust, six minutes of microgravity and temperatures higher than 1,832 degrees, the researchers said.

When the rocket payload was recovered, scientists collected some DNA from all of the application sites and found that as much as 35% had retained its full biological function, they said.

The authors said they were very surprised by the results.

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DNA survives sub-orbital trip on the exterior of a rocket

Plasmid DNA attached to the outer surface of a sounding rocket may be able to withstand rocket launch, a period of residence in suborbital space, re-entry, and landing conditions into the Earth's atmosphere, all the while staying intact and active in its function as carrier of genetic information, according to a study published November 26, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Cora Thiel and Oliver Ullrich from University of Zurich and colleagues.

DNA plays an important role as a biomarker for the search of extraterrestrial signatures of life, and scientists are working to characterize and compare the influence of Earth and space conditions on DNA. The authors of this study designed a test to analyze the biological effects of suborbital spaceflights using the TEXUS-49 rocket mission in March 2011. They attached artificial plasmid DNA carrying a fluorescent marker and an antibiotic resistance gene cassette at three different positions on the rocket exterior, where outer gas temperatures were estimated at over 1000C during the short 780 second flight.

Researchers analyzed the samples immediately after the flight, and the results showed that DNA survives to varying degrees in all cases, and in particular, even after application of temporary heating up to 1000C. Subsequent analyses showed that DNA could be recovered from all application sites on the exterior of the rocket, with a maximum of 53% in the grooves of the screw heads. Up to 35% of DNA retained its full biological function, as shown by its ability to successfully confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria, and to drive expression of a fluorescent marker in eukaryotic cells. The authors suggest this experimental design may establish a robust and universal functionality assay to test for the stability of DNA during an atmospheric transit and re-entry, as well as a model for nucleic acids that could serve as biomarkers in the search for past or present extraterrestrial life.

Prof. Ullrich and Dr. Thiel added: "We were totally surprised. Originally, we designed this experiment as a technology test for biomarker stability during spaceflight and re-entry. We never expected to recover so many intact and functional active DNA. But it is not only an issue from space to Earth, it is also an issue from Earth to space and to other planets: Our findings made us a little bit worried about the probability of contaminating space crafts, landers and landing sites with DNA from Earth."

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112979

Citation: Thiel CS, Tauber S, Schutte A, Schmitz B, Nuesse H, et al. (2014) Functional Activity of Plasmid DNA after Entry into the Atmosphere of Earth Investigated by a New Biomarker Stability Assay for Ballistic Spaceflight Experiments. PLoS ONE 9(11): e112979. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112979

Funding: Support was provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) through grant no. 50WB0912. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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DNA may survive suborbital spaceflight, re-entry