Can Frogs Unlock the Secret to Deep Space Travel for Humans?
When we imagine deep space travel in science-fiction, it tends to go one of two ways: Either we’re traveling at faster-than-light speeds, á la Star Trek, or Battlestar Galactica, or we’re hibernating in some sort of stasis, like in Aliens. While scientists pontificate and calculate whether faster-than-light travel is even theoretically possible, they may have found the answer to the first step in human hibernation. The answer is...frogs.
To be a little more specific, the answer is the green-striped burrowing frog, or cyclorana alboguttata. Native to Australia, the burrowing frog spends most daylight time underground, and even mates and spawns there. This amazing little amphibian has the ability to hibernate for up to three months at a time when food is scarce, without losing muscle tissue, by cocooning itself in its shed skin. We don’t expect astronauts to sew pajamas out of dead skin or anything disgusting like that. But the gene — cutely called “survivin” — that prevents muscle deterioration has been isolated. Another — less cutely named “checkpoint kinase 1” — regulates cell division and DNA repair, is also being studied.
In humans, muscles that go unused atrophy over time, and our bodies “kill” the wasted tissue so it doesn’t continue to pull resources from more important, active parts. By borrowing the burrowing frog’s genes, we might be able to discover a way to mimic its behaviors in astronauts who would be traveling great distances. During long flights, the limited gravity causes them to float, and not use their legs, or many other muscle groups, at all. (Say, in a mission to Mars?) Even long stints in the International Space Station have caused healthy, young astronauts’ muscles to wither away to that of an 80-year-old. Thinking outside of hibernation, this discovery can be put to immediate good use. It has some more earthly benefits as well. Like treating bedridden patients who might suffer muscle loss while still healing. We could save recovering patients time, money, and a lot of unnecessary pain.
Of course, it still hasn't solved the issue of putting astronauts under, or slowing the metabolism and aging process in space. There have been studies and great ideas, but they could only go so far before this important breakthrough. In real-life, hibernation travel would be like a controlled hypthermia. Obviously, that’s where severe tissue damage and loss become a real concern. But now these two routes of study and development might be able to converge and take deep space travel from science fiction, into science fact. And all we had to do was dig a little deeper.
[Pic via Flickr - Doug Beckers]
