Cape Canaveral, Florida - Astronauts on board the US space shuttle Columbia removed embryos from nine pregnant mice on Sunday as they orbited the Earth on a mission to probe the brain and nervous system.
The object of the experiment was to determine how the brain tissue of the mice embryos developed in the absence of gravity. On Saturday, four adult male rats were decapitated and dissected for an experiment to study how the brain "rewires" itself as it adapts to a new environment.