Overview

• Researchers at IISc used PRL’s HISTA shock tube to expose Saccharomyces cerevisiae to ~Mach 5.6 impact-like blasts, with many cells surviving despite slower growth.
• The yeast tolerated 100 mM sodium perchlorate, a level comparable to Martian regolith, and also endured the combined exposure.
• Shock waves prompted formation of stress granules plus P-bodies, whereas perchlorate triggered P-bodies without stress granules.
• Strains defective in ribonucleoprotein condensate assembly showed sharply reduced survival, tying the structures to resilience.
• Transcriptome profiling flagged RNA transcripts perturbed under Mars-like stress, offering mechanistic clues reported in PNAS Nexus.