Space mice: first animals born from sperm stored on International Space Station for 9 months – Telegraph.co.uk

Lead author Teruhiko Wakayama, of theUniversity of Yamanashi,said: Radiation on the International Space Station is more than 100 times stronger than at the Earths surface, and at levels that can cause DNA damage in somatic cell nuclei.

The damage to offspring caused by this irradiation in germ cells has not been examined, however.

Here we preserved mouse sperm on the ISS for 9 months. Although sperm DNA was slightly damaged during space preservation, it could be repaired by the egg and did not impair the birth rate or normality of the offspring.

Our results demonstrate that generating human or domestic animal offspring from space-preserved sperm is a possibility, which should be useful when the space age arrives.

Previous Russian studies had shown that when male and female rats were sent into space in 1979 they did not mate at all.

Another study found that when male rodents were placed in simulated zero gravity conditions they could no longer produce sperm.

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