Abstract
Testing the limits of survivability in space is the primary focus in astrobiological research. Although a number of previous studies have examined terrestrial life survival in an extraterrestrial environment, only a few have investigated how life systems respond to high doses of alpha cosmic ray, the main component of cosmic rays. We used respiration and photosynthetic rates as indicators of the vital signs of the lichen Caloplaca flavovirescens, which is a symbiotic life form including fungi and algae. Our experiment demonstrated that the photosynthetic rate decreased with increased helium-beam doses, whereas the respiration rate was relatively unaffected. Specifically, under a helium-beam dose greater than 10 Gy, the respiration rate remained nearly constant regardless of further increases in the radiation rate. Our results indicate that the different metabolic systems of terrestrial life forms might exhibit different survival characteristics when they are in space.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Mr. Hiroki Fukuma, who arranged the experimental datasets, and Ms. Yuriko Arakawa, secretary at the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University. We would also like to thank the groups within the Tanpopo Mission for the exposure experiments (representative Prof. Akihiko Yamagishi of Tokyo Pharmaceutical University), especially Dr. Yuko Kawaguchi and Dr. Shin’ichi Yokobori for helium-beam irradiation at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, and Dr. Hiroshi Harada of the Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba, for the identification of lichens.
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Miki, K., Kawashima, S., Takahashi, Y. et al. Potential survival of the lichen Caloplaca flavovirescens under high helium-beam doses. Radiat Environ Biophys 58, 449–454 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-019-00803-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-019-00803-3