Tag: amino acids

How Life on Earth Began

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One of the most important questions our species has tackled is the origin of life on Earth.  If we can figure out the conditions and catalyst for the beginning of life, we can look elsewhere in the universe for those same conditions, and zero in on the potential for finding extraterrestrial life.  We know the universe is old enough for the painstakingly slow evolutionary process, but what started it? In the famous 1952 Miller-Urey experiment, a flask containing the basic natural elements water (H20), methane (CH4), Ammonia (NH4), and Hydrogen (H2), all present on the early Earth, was subjected to...

Space Mice With Liver Disease

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Mice are a common laboratory animal for pre-human testing.  Everything from drugs to medical treatments to surgeries have been tested on mice, and the effects of spaceflight are no exception.  Animals such as Laika the dog and Rhesus monkey Albert 1 have had their own test flights, but mice offer an easy alternative when there’s not much extra room on a spacecraft. In a recent study, mice flown on the space shuttle Atlantis were shown to have developed early signs of liver disease.  Could humans in space exhibit the same symptoms? “Prior to this study we really didn’t have much information...