Abstract
Space travel has effects on planarian regeneration that cannot be explained by a null hypothesis.
Highlights
We thank the editors of Regeneration for the opportunity to respond to the letter by Sluys and Stocchino (2017) (S&S), who take issue with our report of observations (Morokuma, Durant, & Williams, 2017) on planaria that spent several weeks aboard the International Space Station (ISS), in comparison with controls that stayed on Earth
We did not claim to have determined which of the many aspects of the space travel experience induced these marked changes, nor did we claim to have identified the molecular mechanism by which the changes were induced
As far as we can tell, the argument by S&S is as stated at the end of their Abstract: “Double-headed worms have been amply documented as arising under experimental conditions as well as spontaneously in stock cultures of planarians.”
Summary
We thank the editors of Regeneration for the opportunity to respond to the letter by Sluys and Stocchino (2017) (S&S), who take issue with our report of observations (Morokuma, Durant, & Williams, 2017) on planaria that spent several weeks aboard the International Space Station (ISS), in comparison with controls that stayed ( sealed) on Earth. As we hope is clear from the text of our paper, we never claimed space travel to be the only way to induce double-headed worms or that double-headed worms had never been observed before.
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