Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!jokim
From: jokim@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (John H. Kim)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Babies born in space.
Summary: Eggs need gravity
Message-ID: <466@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 12 Mar 89 07:11:43 GMT
References: <8Y42Wly00XokQ3qUUv@andrew.cmu.edu> <3870009@hpscdc.HP.COM>
Reply-To: jokim@jarthur.UUCP (John H. Kim)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
Lines: 17

This is my first posting so please excuse any botches :-)

I vaguely recall (sorry, don't remember where) a study that found out
that fetal development in bird eggs involved the cells at the bottom of
the undifferentiated cell mass *always* differentiated into the head (or
some other specific body part--I don't remember).  The obvious
conclusion would be that gravity provides a sort of compass for the same
types of cells (neural, muscular, etc) to aggregate in the same place.
I think the source went on to say something about babies conceived and
developed without gravity possibly ending up as just a mass of cells.

I think the next shuttle flight (or one forthcoming) involves an
experiment about this.

John H. Kim
jokim@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
uunet!muddcs!jarthur!jokim