In the Spotlight:
Space Biology Program Scientist, Dr. Sharmila Bhattacharya was recently interviewed on the 'Crowdscience' podcast for the BBC. In this 3:26 minute track, Sharmila answers the question, "Can Insects Fly in Space?" Hear Alex Lathbridge discuss with her how the fruit flies get to space, and whether they can still fly when they arrive. Listen to the podcast here.
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Visiting Scientist to Conduct Research on Salinity Tolerance in Plants
 Space Biology Visiting Scientist Dr. Sara S. Kuwahara (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, BioResource and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agriculture, Food & Environmental Sciences) began her research in the Kennedy Space Center Plant Processing Area at the end of May. Dr. Kuwahara is conducting research on ultra-fine bubble salinity tolerance in plants.
The study uses a Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) hydroponics system with and without microbubbles to test the effects of increased oxygenation of the solution on salt tolerance performance. Her research goals are to study:
- The Impact of “high” salt on production of leafy greens
- The effect of elevated dissolved oxygen as ultrafine bubbles on growth of leafy greens under standard conditions
- The efficacy of ultrafine bubbled oxygen on mitigating the impact of high saline water on leafy green production in hydroponics.
Four tanks containing hydroponics solutions for plant growth will be prepared two with high salinity, two with low salinity. One of each salinity will have a "micro-bubble" recirculation loop where oxygen will be introduced through a micro-bubble generator. The oxygen will be produced by an oxygen concentrator placed inside a Controlled Environmental Chamber to ensure that there is no change to the oxygen concentration inside the chamber (air in the chamber will remain at ambient conditions). Dr. Kuwahara's research is funded through the BPS Space Biology program office. Read Dr. Kuwahara’s biography here.
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GeneLab/JPL VOICES Pilot GeneLab for University: RNAseq Educator Bootcamp
GeneLab for Colleges and Universities (GL4U) partnered with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Planetary Protection Center of Excellence to provide space biology-relevant training in bioinformatics to educators at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and minority serving institutions (MSIs). From May 31 through June 10, the GeneLab (GL) and JPL teams hosted the pilot GL4U: RNAseq Educator Bootcamp virtually for 6 professors and 4 graduate-level students from HBCUs and MSIs including California State Polytechnic University, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, California State University-Northridge, and New Mexico State University.
During the bootcamp, participants received training via lectures and hands-on instruction using Jupyter Notebooks (JNs) on how to 1) analyze GL RNAseq data and 2) run the RNAseq bootcamp for students at their home institutions, thereby extending the reach of this initiative to more students.
All bootcamp materials and compute resources were provided during the course and all bootcamp content is available on GitHub. To ensure educators from underserved colleges and universities can successfully implement the RNAseq training at their home institutions, the required compute resources will be made available to them through the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Science Managed Cloud Environment (SMCE).
The GL4U training program provides undergraduate students from underrepresented groups the opportunity to learn about NASA and Space Biology, and to enhance their career prospects by gaining hands-on experience analyzing omics data, a skillset that is highly applicable and marketable in the life sciences. Pre- and post-bootcamp surveys were completed by all participants to assess their knowledge on the subject matter and their preparedness to subsequently teach their students. The results of these surveys show the overwhelming success of the bootcamp.
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 Spaceflight News
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Bioexperiment-1 Getting Ready for Launch on Orion Artemis-I Spacecraft
The two BioExperiment-1 Assemblies were installed into the Orion Artemis-I spacecraft in May. These assemblies will hold the two BioExperiment-1 science bags, which will be placed into the Container Assemblies 17 days prior to the Artemis-I launch.
Science Bag-1 will contain two BioExpt-1 experiments:
1) Arabidopsis thaliana plant seeds for Dr. Federica Brandizzi's study, “Life Beyond Earth: Effect of Space Flight on Seeds with Improved Nutritional Value”
2) Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast for Dr. Luis Zea's study, “Multi-Generational Genome-Wide Yeast Fitness Profiling Beyond and Below Earth’s Van Allen Belts."
Science Bag-2 will also contain two BioExperiment-1 experiments:
1) Chlamydomonas reinhardtii algae for Dr. Timothy Hammond's study, “Fuel to Mars”
2) Aspergillus niger fungi for Dr. Zheng Wang's study, “Investigating the Roles of Melanin and DNA Repair on Adaptation and Survivability of Fungi in Deep Space."
Artemis-I launch is currently scheduled for no earlier than August. Stay tuned!
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 New Discoveries
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Spaceflight Delays Maturity of Nerve Cells
New findings have been published from the Bioscience-04 mission, which was the first study to investigate the multiplication of nervous system stem cells in space.
This study focused on the development of the type of cell that is critical for myelination and electrical signals transmission, oligodendrocyte progenitors (OLP).
Results show that the iron carrier glycoprotein Tf, an early marker for oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, was expressed in a location where the target gene is not known to have a function - in the nucleus.
In addition, analysis of the spaceflight cells showed they contained 3.5 times more Tf than that of ground control cells, indicating that Tf is regulated by gravity. Space-flown OLP cells also displayed a more immature phenotype than the ground controls.
Findings from this spaceflight experiment open two main fields of study to understand the upregulation of the Tf gene and secretion of the protein that keeps OLPs at a progenitor stage rather than moving forward to more mature phenotypes. Principal Investigator Dr. Araceli Espinosa of the University of California Los Angeles concludes that microgravity is becoming a novel platform to study why in some myelin disorders OLPs are present, but do not mature.
This research seeks to identify molecules that increase cell proliferation, which can lead to the design of potential countermeasures to prevent or alleviate the negative effects observed in astronauts exposed to long-term missions. Paper is available here.
Image: Representative samples from ground controls (A,B,C) and space flown OLP cells (D, E, F) (from study paper).
This research was funded by Space Biology grant, "The Impact of Real Microgravity on the Proliferation of Human Neural Stem Cells and derived-Oligodendrocytes" to Dr. Araceli Espinosa of the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research is focused on understanding the repair of Central Nervous System (CNS) damage caused by disease or injury. Her principal research deals with the role of oligodendrocytes, the cells that synthesize and maintain myelin in the central nervous system.
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Find us at Facebook.com/spacebiology.
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 Events & Opportunities
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Mark your calendars‼️
Interested in learning more about GeneLab's Analysis Working Groups (AWG) and their science? Then join the 2022 AWG Symposium to hear compelling scientific presentations from invited speakers and AWG members.
June 30th, 10am-2:30pm (Pacific Time).
Register online here.
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Open Source Science Data Repositories Workshop September 27 - 30
 This is an open event that will be of interest to researchers, big data teams, and archivists at the Science Mission Directorate Data Repositories along with mission and community members working in these areas. This workshop is a follow-on to the previous Data Repositories Workshop hosted at Glenn Research Center back in 2018. The September 2022 Data Repositories Workshop will cover the following primary themes:
- Cloud Computing for Open Source Science
- Science Discovery Engine (SDE) and data standards
- Transform to Open Science (TOPS)
- SMD policies and resources related to Open Science
One of the goals of the workshop is to encourage cross-disciplinary discussions. The workshop format will include an opportunity for each of the divisions to highlight the work of their data repositories along with "unconference" sessions determined by participant interest. More information will be forthcoming in June and posted at the Open Source Science Initiative website. Please feel free to share with others who would be interested.
The workshop is designed to be virtual with an in-person option at a location to be confirmed.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this event, please reach out to Steve Crawford at Steven.M.Crawford@nasa.gov.
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 Funding Resources for Prospective Researchers
Are you a researcher and wondering where you can find funding opportunities to enable your research to be flown to the orbiting laboratory? There are several sources of funding available to scientists to be used for research and development, payload development, payload processing at NASA facilities, on-orbit operation, and more. Visit this link for a guide to online funding information for space station research.
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Biospecimen Sharing Program
Share | Research | Discover
 Help NASA maximize the scientific return from biological spaceflight investigations and encourage broader participation of the research community in space biology-related research. Non-human biospecimens are dissected, collected, and preserved by the Space Biology Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP) team at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC). These biospecimens and associated Metadata are made available through NASA’s Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC). They are searchable and available for request on the Life Sciences Data Archive public website. Flight and ground control biospecimens are available from COSMOS, NASA’s space shuttle missions, and International Space Station (ISS) investigations. What will your discoveries unfold?
Check out NBISC to learn more about NBISC and how to request these biospecimens.
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