Party like Bob the wormonaut, wormkind's finest of them all

The historic event 60 years ago paved the way for many space explorations that have benefited humankind in many areas ranging from telecommunications, to weather forecasting and disaster management.

On this occasion, let’s also celebrate by getting to know Bob the wormonaut, one of wormkind’s finest who together with their kindreds or kind have been contributing to humankind both on Earth and in space.

Bob is a descendant of the classification order Rhabditida , class Chromadorea and belongs to the kingdom Animalia.

Many in the science or research world would know Bob and their kind better as Caenorhabditis elegans or C.elegans in short.

We would probably be more familiar with Bob as a type of roundworm or ‘cacing gelang’ largely ruling the vast underground soil world, different from the more common earthworm or ‘cacing tanah’ belonging to the order Opisthopora, class Clitellata.

Worms are more than a fish bait. It would be exaggerating to say that they are less appreciated, but how many of us know that Bob and his kind have been awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Medicine?

“A humble nematode has wormed its way into the affections of the scientific community and helped to secure this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,” reported Nature’s 2002 Worm cast in starring role for Nobel prize article.

These good soil-dwelling nematode worms like Bob and their kind are central to scientific research on aging.

BAMMsat’s Michael Cooke from University of Exeter and University of Nottingham said, “Spaceflight is an extremely dangerous environment due to microgravity and cosmic radiation. The combined effect of this result in multiple adaptations leading to poor health, closely resembling ageing, most notably muscle loss or sarcopenia, and bone loss or osteoporosis. Both conditions are closely associated with advanced aging.”

He added, “A single year in microgravity can accumulate the same amount of damage as 40 years of ageing on Earth.”

Cooke further explained that, “On Earth the most effective way to prevent unhealthy aging is to exercise, but this is not always possible with the bed bound patients, on the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts have an intense exercise routine involving both resistance and cardio. However, this does very little to prevent the loss of muscle and bone during spaceflight so a great understanding is required to provide more effective interventions.

“However, this is difficult as spaceflight is very expensive and there are very few astronauts to participate in the experiments.”

Under the Rocket and Balloon Experiments for University Students (REXUS/BEXUS) programme in Europe, the BAMMsat research team which comprise of students and staff from University of Cranfield and University of Exeter is working on counteracting ageing, as it is a major health concern both here on Earth and in spaceflight.

So here is where Bob comes to the rescue.

C.elegans like Bob are ideal candidates as wormonauts or suitable space test subjects due to their physical, physiological and genetic make-up.

Bob, truly one of a kind of a worm and the finest for space research.

An article on Nature titled “Finding function in novel targets: C. elegans as a model organism” by researchers Titus Kaletta and Michael O. Hengartner in 2006 highlighted that studies on C.elegans have already cultivated understanding of the mechanics of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and depression, and that these microscopic creatures have an extra edge over mice or rats when it comes to high-throughput technologies.

Here is another fun fact! C. elegans has been used as a model organism in UMBI or UKM’s Molecular Biological Insititue’s space and simulated microgravity research project and is presently being used as a model to study the host-pathogen interaction in antibiotic resistant infections, particularly in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections.

As ideal wormonauts, the journey of C.elegans into space began in 2003 with the International C. elegans First Experiment (ICE-FIRST) spaceflight mission. It continued with other several missions and the most recent one being the Molecular Muscle Experiment (MME) in 2018 and a follow up mission using worms in space to understand muscle loss, MME2 is expected to be launched later this year.

“These missions have shown that the animals survive spaceflight and share the same adaptations to spaceflight as humans do, cementing them as a spaceflight model, “ said Cooke whose research area is in biological operations, focusing on aging and pharmaceutical interventions to promote healthier ageing and have provided potential targets of intervention.

Thanks to Bob and fellow kindreds, humanity has another chance in better managing its unhealthy aging woes or age related fragilities be it on Earth and in space, to further improve the quality of life and mitigate the mortality rate among the ageing population.

Bob is expected to be launched into space on BAMMsat in October 2021.

We can give an ode to Bob the wormonaut on this occasion as the space community comes together to celebrate Yuri’s Night, a global space party born out of the minds of Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides and George Whitesides at UNISPACE III, as a fun way to bring the world together through a shared celebration of humankind’s accomplishments in space exploration.

“April 12 is the dual anniversary of the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961 and the first launch of a reusable spacecraft, space shuttle Columbia, by Bob Crippen and John Young in 1981. It is a cosmic coincidence too exciting to ignore!

“On the 10th anniversary of Yuri’s Night in 2011, the UN designated April 12 as the International Day of Human Spaceflight in recognition of these historic events,” added Yuri’s Night website.

--------------------------------------- * Sathesh Raj is a regular contributor at www.astroawani.com and is into all things nature and science. He is also part of the BAMMsat on BEXUS team as the student marketing and outreach volunteer team member. The research team is working towards enabling affordable biological research in space, so this is him spreading the good word out about Bob, the wormonaut and the wormkind’s finest on the occasion of Yuri’s Night.