Researchers have found that the beam of a scanning electron microscope can turn a thin coating that occurs naturally on the larvae of some insects into a sort of miniature protective suit that can keep the creatures alive in a vacuum for up to an hour.
Described in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine in Japan made their discovery while testing how long various animals could survive in the high-vacuum environment that's created when scanning an object with an electron microscope.
Most organisms lose water rapidly in such conditions, which leads to death by dehydration and physical distortion.
However, the larvae of the fruit fly Drosophila survived for 60 minutes in the high-vacuum state and continued developing normally after being returned to normal pressure.
The data builds on the team's previous findings that some organisms, including beetle larvae and ticks, can survive short periods in low-pressure environments on Earth and, in the case of tardigrades, the 1-millimeter-long creatures also known as 'water bears,' in outer space.
Biologist Takahiko Hariyama, lead researcher of the group, explained the cuticles of fruit fly larvae are naturally coated in a substance made of protein molecules, which locked together in long chains, or polymers, when exposure to the high-intensity beam of the electron microscope.
The result was a flexible coat measuring just 50-100 nanometers thick.
To further test their hypothesis, the researchers applied an artificial version of the coating to organisms that don't usually have one naturally, including a flatworm and the larvae of an Asian tiger mosquito. The man-made coating provided similar protection.
If it proves sound, the technique "could change the way in which some living organisms could be studied using present-day electron microscopes", says Harry Horner, a developmental biologist at Iowa State University in Ames. "Not only with organisms that exist on Earth, but with organisms sent into space or retrieved from space explorations."
Hariyama and his team next plan to send small animals wearing nano-suits to space. He adds they've already had success applying nano-suits to small fish.