The International Space Station (ISS) is due to get some new crew members very soon - fruit flies.
What amazes me about this story is this - "Genetically speaking, people and fruit flies are surprisingly alike, explains biologist Sharmila Bhattacharya of NASA's Ames Research Center. About 77% of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in the genetic code of fruit flies, and 50% of fly protein sequences have mammalian analogues."
Bottom line, fruit flies are very useful to study due to the similarities between us and them. What affects them in space affects astronauts. No less than the National Research Council recommended this type of research.
Fruit Fly Lab-01 will fly to the ISS on a Space-X mission slated for later this summer.
Sky Guy in VA
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