Searchable abstracts of presentations at key conferences on reproductive biology and medicine
Reproduction Abstracts (2014) 1 P165 | DOI: 10.1530/repabs.1.P165

1Yamanashi University, Kofu City, Japan; 2JAXA, Tukuba City, Japan; 3JAMSS, Tukuba City, Japan; 4JSF, Tukuba City, Japan.


Sustaining life beyond earth either on space stations or other planets will require a clear understanding of how the environment in space affects key phases of mammalian reproduction. However, because of the difficulty of conducting such experiments in live animals, most studies on reproduction in space have thus far been carried out in species such as fish or amphibians. Mammalian embryos can only be cultured for a few days and could pose technical challenges for the astronauts. For this reason experiments on mammalian reproduction in gamete cells was considered unfeasible using present-day technology. In a previous study, we found that freeze-dried spermatozoa can be preserved at room temperature for a few months without losing their fertilization capacity. This is advantageous for space experiments because the samples have lower mass and do not require a freezer for storage during launch or landing. Here, we propose to examine the effects of cosmic radiation on spermatozoa using freeze-dried samples. These freeze-dried spermatozoa collected from four different mouse strains were lunched at August 4th, 2013 and kept on board the ISS in the Japanese Experiment Module ‘Kibo’, then exposed to cosmic radiation during 2–3 years. We lunched three boxes of sample for space and first box will be return in April 2014. After came back to earth, we will try to make offspring from them by ICSI and examine the effects of cosmic radiation on sperm DNA. This will be the first step for studying mammalian reproduction in space.

Volume 1

World Congress of Reproductive Biology 2014

Edinburgh, UK
02 Sep 2014 - 04 Sep 2014

World Congress of Reproductive Biology 

Browse other volumes

Article tools

My recent searches

No recent searches.

My recently viewed abstracts