Descendents Of Tiny Worms Still Thriving

They're alive, decendents of what may have been the only survivors of the Columbia disaster last February. No, not the seven human astronauts killed in the disaster. Worms.

They're no bigger than the head of a pin. And they're not the original Columbia voyagers. In fact, they're the seventh generation grown since the doomed shuttle lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 16. Each generation, living in petrie dishes full of an experimental growth medium has... ingested the previous ones. But the point is, they lived through the explosive decompression that accompanied Columbia's firey breakup over the skies of Texas, just minutes before the space plane was set to land on Feb. 1.

Sole Survivors

"To my knowledge, these are the only live experiments that have been located and identified," said a NASA spokesman. The worms were found in a six-pound locker gathered with other Columbia debris at the Kennedy Space Center, after being recovered in southeastern Texas and western Louisiana. That was a couple of weeks ago. Apparently no one had checked to see how the little guys were doing, until recently. They're doing fine, thank you.

The worms, technically known Caenorhabditis elegans, generally grow to about 1/8" (3mm) long, and have two sexes: male and "both." The hermaphrodite can fertilize up to 300 or so eggs, but seems to encourage the pure males to do it. They are primitive biological specimens, but they do share some important physiological characteristics with humans. Hence, the experiment.

At Ohio State University, Dr Fred Sack, the scientist who put together the C. elegans study, said: "It's astonishing to get the possibility of data after all that has happened." Sacks, who headed up the experiment for the Ames Research Center at NASA, said, We never expected it. We expected a molten mass. The cells were surprisingly well-preserved, but we're analyzing how useful it's going to be."

FMI: http://www.astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news