Were the C. elegans laboratory grown or taken from a natural habitat location?
The worms that were flown were adapted to the media that they live in and were grown in the laboratory. The original worms that they came from were isolated from the field. They were isolated from mushroom compost near Bristol England. The worms from the field were grown for a long time in a laboratory and were then deposited as the N2 strain in a C. elegans stock center to be used by investigators around the world to study multiple questions. Did you expect the C. elegans to reproduce normally in space? If so, how many more did you expect to bring back? Previous experiments with C. elegans in space have demonstrated that C. elegans can reproduce on solid media with bacteria as the food source. The worms flown on ICE-FIRST also reproduced in the liquid media. Will radiation exposure from being outside the atmosphere harm the C. elegans in any way? No changes were in mutation rate were observed. On the Shuttle, Soyuz or on the International Space Station organisms are exposed to a diffe
