The International Space Station (ISS) prepares for an unusual tenant, the “blob”, an organism that fascinates biologists, which on Tuesday will enter orbit to be used in an educational experiment led by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
From Earth, hundreds of students between 8 and 17 years old will reproduce the experience starting next autumn (northern hemisphere, spring in Brazil) with this curious living being, from the protist kingdom, which cannot be classified as an animal, plant or fungus. Students will be guided by the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) in collaboration with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The “blob”, called “Physarum polycephalum”, is composed of a single cell and several nuclei. It looks like a spongy yellow mass, it has no mouth, no feet, no brain. And yet it eats, grows, moves (very slowly) and has amazing learning abilities.
Their nuclei can divide at will and the body can go into numbness (without dying) from dehydration. It is in this state, called “sclerotium”, that various pieces of the “blob” will enter space aboard an International Space Station supply cargo ship.
When the astronaut rehydrates them in September, four sclerotia of about 0.5 cm will wake up 400 km from Earth, in Petri dishes, and will comply with two protocols: one will test the attitude of the “blobs” when they are deprived of food and the another will provide food for the more fortunate (oat flakes).
“Third dimension?”
The goal is to observe the effects of weightlessness on the body. “Today, no one knows what behavior it will have in [situação de] microgravity: in which direction will it move, will it take the third dimension upwards or obliquely”, commented Pierre Ferrand, professor of Life and Earth Sciences at CNES, one of the project’s architects.
“I’m curious to see if it’s going to play out in pillars,” said blob expert Audrey Dussutour, research director at the Center for Research in Animal Cognition in Toulouse, southern France.
On land, thousands of “blob” specimens cut from the same strain (LU352) as their space counterparts will be distributed among 4,500 schools in France.
“More than 350,000 students will ‘touch’ the ‘blob,'” said Christine Correcher, head of educational projects at the space agency.
Between the end of August and the beginning of September, teachers will receive a kit with 3 to 5 sclerotia and a tutorial for carrying out the experiment.
When Thomas Pesquet moistens his “blobs” in space, students will do the same in the classroom. Subsequently, several observation sessions will be carried out to compare the behavior of Earth specimens with those sent to space.
The “blob” appeared on Earth more than 500 million years ago, before animals. For a long time it was considered a fungus, but later it was removed from that kingdom and since the 1990s it has been part of the amoebozoan subclass, to which the amoebas belong.
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