Space Critters Will One Day Be A Boom Industry. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! by Wayne Smith Brisbane - Apr 28, 2003 So how possible is it that insects could really grow to enormous dimensions outside of Earth's restrictive gravity? An opinion article at Spacedaily.com.
Yes I saw that movie, Starship Troopers, we go to war with huge bugs! Interesting article. Scary though I hate spiders, I dont want one eating me. But think of how much honey one bee hive could pump out. It could be the answer for food shortages. But first, we need to colonize the moon and mars etc etc.
maybe it isn't possible, because gravity is not the only thing that is holding back insect size. Maybe insects also have to breath more effciently and have a proper 'blood' circulation before they can get huge. Although recently it has been shown that the trachea system, the network of airtubes that run through the insect body and provide insects with air, is more active than previously thought, it still might not be effective enough to sustain a huge bodysize. Also could there 'primitive' heart pump enough blood though their body? And they don't really have a circulatory blood system like we do. Their blood just simply flows around in their body cavity.
Genetic Engineering will open space up for human exploitation. It won’t help us get up there but once we are there made to measure organisms will help us survive. I would wonder how large bacteria could become under zero gravity. Football sized bacteria or even bigger. A single celled organism that can engulf a small space rock and begin to break it down to more usable forms. The possibilities are endless. I’ve always seen the Earth as the seed that will bring live to all the far reaches of the universe. The technological hurdles are vast but can be overcome in time. The biggest hurdles will be the human fear of the unknown. The space-green’s (for want of a better name) already hamper the exploration of mars and the other planets because life might be there. Trajectories are inefficient because they don’t want contaminated rocket parts hitting mars. I say that we should start throwing every life form we can find, that has even the slightest chance of surviving, onto these new worlds and rocks in space. A sterile world is not a healthy world, its a dead world and offers little to humanity. Unless we find life forms out there that are sophisticated enough to have structured intelligent ownership of space territories it is all ours to do with as we please.
if a bacterium would grow as large as a football field it would also have to adapt many of its characteristics. for instance: If it grows bigger than it needs more structural components. If it needs more structural components it needs more proteins. If it needs more proteins than it needs to upregulate its protein production...bingo...we have hit a wall. You can't indefinitely speed up RNA and protein production. There are some strategies to overcome this problem, such as duplication of the genomic DNA or specific genes, but this process can't be extended indefinitely. also a giant bacterium would face metabolic problems. There is no such thing as blood circulation after all to distribute oxygen and other necessary products. scaling up or down looks interesting on a superficial scale but usually things are of a certain size for specific reasons, and gravity is probably not the main restrictive reason here.
<b>streety</b> We are talking mostly of zero or micro gravity environments. But in general we are talking about any extreme environment. <b>spuriousmonkey</b> Was not thinking of a football field size, more of a football or even marble size. But after some thought, if the bacterium was very thin maybe it could cover a football field or even very long (hundreds of kilometers). I agree that there would be many problems. Maybe the cell could hold many nuclei, maybe even different DNA in each nucleus. The metabolic rate of these cells could also be slowed. I’m of to do a little research to find out how big cells (bacterium) can get here on Earth.
<b>Biggest Bacteria Ever Found.</b> Visible to the naked eye, about the size of a full stop. more at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1999-04/AAft-BBEF-160499.php
Well you won't find much air in microgravity situations so there is no need to worry about getting that resource to every part of the cell. I don't think you will find bacteria in the depths of space simply because it represents a decrease in entropy and so will require a lot of resources to achieve and they aren't out there.
Generally there is not much out there from which to extract energy. But if the organism has a sufficiently slow metabolic rate it wouldn’t require much energy, It could even hibernate till a close by supernova, or interstellar shock wave passes by. We are not talking about natural life forms but life forms engineered by man.
multinuclear comes very close to multicellular and what is the point then of growing a giant single celled organism? And bacteria don't have nuclei. Btw Drosophila development goes through a stage in which only the nuclei multiply, but no cells are formed. It is called the syncytium. It is basically a giant egg with many nuclei scattered around in the cytoplasm. At one point the cells move towards the outside and a cell membrane envelopes the nuclei. The cellmembrane free stage might facilitate signaling and the establishment of positional information because any transcription factor can work as a signallinf molecule. Normally a signalling molecule is excreted, moves to the surface of another cell. Binds and activates a receptor on the cell membrane. This activates a signalling cascade inside the cell activating for instance a transcription factor, which activates a specific gene or a specific set of genes. Obviously if there aren't any cell membranes to hinder transcription factors they can directly go from nucleus to nucleus, without all the intermediate signalling cascades. slowing down the metabolic rate sounds nice, but then the organism can't do anything, and again what is the point of having an organism that can't do anything?
<b>spuriousmonkey</b> You seem to know what you’re talking about. Thank for your corrections and input. On earth multi cellular organisms are more efficient then single celled organisms, but in space this might be different. I’m not biologist so I do not know. Would love to hear of any such research. Im sure that at some stage, even at low metabolic rates, something could be created from the sparse energy, that was not directly beneficial to the organism. I suppose that we are coming up against one of the biggest hurdles of space exploration. That is.. that long term planning required to make economic success of space, is outside our human time scales. It would only cost a few billion dollars to go out and return some of the readily available resources from near earth asteroids. The returns would be vast. The problem is no bank is going to loan me 5 billion dollars for the next 200 years to do that.. Humanity must stabilize. We must be able to invest in long term projects, 100 to 1000 years. Only then will the slow organism be of use to man…
True but food will be essential to that. Machinery too. The most reliable and cheapest form of technology for labour has always been life. Horses existed before cars. Many forms of life will be taken along for the ride. I kicked myself after submitting that story. Although I mentioned that the respiratory systems of mini-beasts don't scale up as well as ours do, I should also have added a paragraph or two on genetic engineering. If selective breeding hits a wall then I think we could gene splice around it. Our genetic science is still in its early days but insects are the easiest subjects to manipulate. Weve been experimenting with their DNA for decades. I saw one mayfly with legs instead of feelers. We now have a human genome or two mapped out so altering the very simple internal organs of bugs should be a piece of cake. A rather gooey piece of cake but relatively simple nonetheless. Perhaps we can give them a circulatory system like ours. Anybody see 'mimic'? Both I suppose. In artificial environment controlled habitats either in space or on rocky bodies including worlds. Most worlds such as the satellite moons of gas giants have very low gravity. We are entertaining zero G bioengineering possibilities. I recall a site in Australia with a fossil bed which predates our origins. Don't look at me that way. No, Seriously, big spongy things composed of single membrane cells were the first life on earth. Then they vanished and the earth was sterile again until a smaller variety appeared. Stunned the hell out of me to read it. Begs the question of whether life may not have had several jerky starts. Fossils from that period are extremely rare and difficult to identify. I don't know the exact story but if you want to know about how big cells can get start with 'early life' and see what turns up. Without predators the first single celled animals likely reached as large a size as possible. They had enough time and radiation levels were much higher which would have increased mutation rates.
sorry to brake your bubble, but no, genetic engineering doesn't become a piece of cake once the genome is known. The fruitfly with legs instead of antennea is a so-called homeotic transformation. Basically a mutation in a homeotic gene causes the antennea imaginal disc to think that it is actually a leg disc. It then follows the developmental program of a leg instead of antenna. In a way this is a very simple transformation and at the same time an exception. There are not that many homeotic genes. In drosophila they are located in the Antennapedia-bithorax complex. It is actually a mutation in the antennapedia gene that converts antennae into legs. Normally it is only expressed in the thorax, but in the dominant mutation of Anntenapedia it is also expressed in the head region. Transforming antennea into legs doesn't actually mean we know how to make a leg, although there is a wide body of research covering this subject. We surely have some thoughts about how a leg is formed of course. But to change this organ and improve on it, simply by knowing the genome is a HUGE leap. The genome is not a straightforward blueprint. The development of any organ is dynamic and shape is not determined by organ-specific genes. As a matter of fact. The same gene families of regulatory molecules are used in every organ to set up shape and positional information. Changes in one of these genes to change one organ will have most probably have consequences for other organs. The complexity of these processes is daunting. It personally drives me crazy, because I question more and more if we will ever find an answer. Every answer results in more and more questions.
I didn't mean to belittle the work of genetic scientists. Genetically modified foods are now commonplace items indistinguishable from other foods but for labelling. Gene spliced for various enhanced properties such as survival in unusual climates. We spliced a seaweed gene into mice which makes them glow in the dark. There is even a goat which secretes spider silk protein in its milk. We could first selectively breed insects to the maximum survivable size possible in zero G. How difficult would it be to genetically alter the circulatory and respiratory systems of these larger specimens to allow further growth? We wouldn't require too complex a system. Just something that works for large animals in zero G. Each experiment would demonstrate its results in a fraction of the time required for mammalian experiments. Many bugs reach adulthood in a matter of days. I can't foresee any animal rights problems if the pioneering work was perfected on cockroaches. Mind you. I daresay those little devils will eventually find a way of stowing into space anyway.
I don't get what would be so great about really large bacteria and huge insects. I mean, sure, it'd be neat, but what's more useful, huge bacteria, or a huge amount of normal sized bacteria?
Beats the hell out of me. The article was about creepy crawly type bugs. Not the single celled bacteria kind of bug. It was fun watching that tangent spin off into infinity but its too far 'out there', even for me. It could have hundreds of possible applications which might turn society on its head and improve our standard of living irrevocably but I'm buggered if I know what they are. I like to watch topics meander all over the place and by pure chance stumble onto something new. All ideas are the sum of other ideas combined. I thought giant invertebrates of the animal kingdom enough to encapsulate peoples imaginations but I was ofcourse wrong. Never underestimate imagination. There would have to be medical possibilities with giant cells. Our knowledge of biology would expand. As our appreciation of the most simple animals grew we would better understand ourselves. We are after all composed of single cells working together. Each 'brick' holds secrets we might uncover with monstrous cells. Ok, I'm rambling again. Why giant insects? Why not microscopic milking cows? Why don't we prefer farming quails to chickens? It all comes down to production. Mass markets demand quantity as well as quality. Either lots of small animals or a few really large animals. If all you want is to throw them into a mince grinder for pet food then size doesn't rate as important. However, if it is a specialised product which must be extracted from the animal such as silk then time spent on each animal becomes important. Milking cows must be handmilked or attached to milking machines. It takes time. Venom must be extracted from individual spiders for collection to make anti-venom. Drop by tiny drop. With giant spiders a single specimen could provide the same volume of venom as a million ordinary spiders. Same goes for silk worms. Better care for individual animals increases their survival rate. Costs come down. Consumers get a better deal. We've been selectively breeding farm animals for greater size for a very long time. Insects couldn't be included up to now.
Why do you need the spider if all you want is the venom.. Why not a bag with venom producing cells.. Just provide a nutrient bath, via pipes, squeeze daily and you have venom with out having to support those pesky spiders… Same for milk…
Sounds interesting. Can we actually do that? If so, why are we presently still using redbacks and widows etc? Catching such delicate mini-beasts while wearing thick rubber gloves, provoking them into attacking a thin rubber membrane to catch a micro sliver of venom and then repeating the process for hundreds of other farm spiders each day seems ridiculous if we have the technology to milk a bag of nutrient bathed cells.
here are some links n the subject http://www.wmnh.com/wmel0000.htm http://www.nature.com/nsu/020304/020304-6.html http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~GEL3/SHORTCH02.html
