In the Spotlight:
 Dr. Lisa Carnell is the new Division Director for NASA’S Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) Division
Recently, Dr. Carnell served as BPS’s Program Scientist for Translational Research where she led the division’s strategic partnership initiatives with other government agencies, including NIH, BARDA, FDA, DARPA, NSF, and the USDA. She was also responsible for advancing the division’s commercial engagement initiatives.
Dr. Carnell formerly served as the Space Radiation Medical Countermeasure Lead for NASA’s Human Research Program. In this role, she was involved in all aspects of understanding and mitigating radiation-induced health effects on humans including cancer, cardiovascular, central nervous system, and acute radiation syndrome.
She holds a PhD from Duke University where she studied the effect of physiological and electrical signals on the differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells.
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Student Citizen Scientists Learn How Their Research Helps NASA Develop Crops for Space
Growing Beyond Earth student citizen scientists and interns, employees, and university partners with Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden visited Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in July to learn about NASA’s space crop production and space plant biology research. KSC Space Biology Project Scientist Dr. Gioia Massa and KSC Space Biology Strategic Planner Trent Smith led the group discussions and tours.
The students saw how their research connects to NASA’s research in the Crop Readiness Level flow. They also visited the Experiment Monitoring Area where they learned how plant flight experiments on the ISS are managed from the ground.
Last year, more than 380 middle and high schools participated in the Growing Beyond Earth Challenge to conduct plant experiments to help NASA select crops and methods to provide astronauts with fresh, nutritious crops. Over the past seven years more than 40,000 middle and high school students and their teachers nationwide contributed hundreds of thousands of data points and tested over 180 varieties of edible plants.
More on NASA citizen science projects can be found here. More on the Growing Beyond Earth project can be found here.
Image: Students, staff, and faculty from the Growing Beyond Earth project and Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden tour the KSC Space Station Processing Facility.
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 Spaceflight News
NG-19 Launches on August 1 for cargo delivery to the ISS
 Onboard the Antares rocket was a repeat run of the Space Biology funded MVP-Cell-02A experiment.
On-orbit operations were initiated by NASA astronaut Stephen “Steve” Bowen on August 18, by hydration of the bacteria "raceways."
The experiment will compare the evolution of bacteria in space using the Multi-use Variable-g Platform (MVP). MVP Cell-02 will compare the evolution of bacteria in microgravity with an artificial gravity control. The experiment may run for up to 28 days, with cameras capturing periodic still images of the bacterial growth, before returning to Earth.
Image: The MVP Experiment Module used in the Experimental Evolution of Bacillus subtilis Populations in Space: Mutation, Selection and Population Dynamics (MVP Cell-02). (Image is from the SpX-18 mission).
This is a study aimed at understanding how organisms evolve to adapt to the space environment. During the experiment, Bacillus subtilis bacteria will be grown in specially designed environmental hardware in a range of conditions, allowing researchers to investigate whether the adaptation process occurs differently in microgravity and in the spaceflight environment as a whole. The MVP-Cell-02A that launched on NG-19 is a repeat of MVP-Cell-02 that was flown in 2019.
Craig Everroad, Ph.D. is the Principal Investigator for the MVP Cell-02A experiment. Jessica Koehne, Ph.D. and Antonio Ricco, Ph.D. are Co-Investigators. All three are from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.
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NASA’s First Biology Payload for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative
 LEIA – short for the Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications – will allow NASA scientists to study the biological effects of these extreme environmental conditions by sending living organisms, in the form of yeast, to the Moon.
LEIA will be the first biology experiment to be delivered to the lunar surface through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. After arrival at the Moon, the LEIA team will remotely monitor the health of yeast as it grows within LEIA’s hardware that is, in turn, attached to a lunar lander.
The experiment will likely be completed within 10 Earth days or less and these data will be transmitted back to researchers through direct-to-Earth communications. Read more about this future mission to the Moon.
Image: A Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications, LEIA, microfluidic card that houses dry yeast cells in tiny compartments between electronics that control temperature and optics.
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 New Discoveries
Scientists Test Effects of Deep-Space Radiation on Plant Seeds
- Scientists successfully conducted radiation exposure experiments to determine the effects of deep-space radiation on seeds during long-duration missions
- If crop seeds are to be stored on space vehicles for long-duration missions, we need to understand the effects of deep space on seed degradation
 Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Project Scientist for Space Biology Dr. Ye Zhang and NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow Dr. Alexander Meyers conducted two experiments using the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the neutron radiation facility at Colorado State University (CSU), Fort Collins, Colorado.
The irradiated seeds will be planted at KSC to evaluate seed germination rates, seedling development, and transcriptomic profiles. Seeds exposed to these ground-based simulation conditions will be compared to the flight seeds to help NASA understand the root cause of changes in plant development.
Image: Conducting seed radiation exposure in a simulated space environment at the Brookhaven National Lab (from right to left): KSC NPP Fellow Dr. Alexandra Meyers, KSC Project Scientist Dr. Ye Zhang, BRIC-27 PI Dr. Agata Zupanska, and BRIC-27 team member Emily Lockwood.
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Biofilm formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in spaceflight is minimized on lubricant impregnated surfaces
- Bacterial biofilms in spacecraft pose a risk to the proper functioning of systems and to astronauts’ health
- Biofilms are communities of microbes attached to each other and to surfaces which can cause damage to materials either directly by using it as food, or indirectly via their metabolic byproducts
- Materials can profoundly influence biofilm growth, and it is possible to design surfaces that either prevent microbial adhesion or that have antimicrobial properties
- Biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were grown in spaceflight over material surfaces
- Biofilms in microgravity were less robust than on Earth and that lubricant impregnated surface strongly inhibits biofilm formation compared to stainless steel. This effect is even greater in spaceflight than on Earth, making it a promising option for spacecraft use.
The article is available online.
 This study was funded by Space Biology grant, "Characterization of Fungal Biofilm (Molds) Formation, Growth, and Gene Expression on Different Materials in Microgravity", to Dr. Luis Zea of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Zea is a Sr. Business Development Manager In-Space R&D, for Sierra Space and Adjunct Professor, Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
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Find us at Facebook.com/spacebiology.
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Events & Opportunities
Announcing Public Briefing of the next Decadal Survey
"Thriving in Space: Decadal Survey for the Biological and Physical Sciences in Space"
Thriving in Space, a new National Academies’ decadal survey, provides a roadmap for increasing national investment in BPS research, from experiments to infrastructure to education. The report identifies key scientific questions, priorities, and ambitious research campaigns that will enable human space exploration and transform our understanding of how the universe works.
Learn more by joining us for the report release event on Tuesday, September 12, 2023 from 10:30am-12:00pm ET. During the event, decadal survey co-chairs Robert Ferl and Krystyn Van Vliet will highlight the key findings and recommendations from the report and take questions from the audience.
Participants are invited to attend in person at the Keck building in Washington, D.C. or online via webcast.
Register Online
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GeneLab Offers Online Open Science Educator Resources
 GeneLab has created educational resources that are publicly available to help drive research and invite educators along with their students at various skill levels to perform real RNAseq analysis. Open science enables accessibility to an audience that might otherwise not have their own methods of data acquisition through wet labs or experimentation yet have talents or interests in the field. For young scientists, these also provide early career exploration opportunities to allow for effective professional preparation.
For more information visit Open Science Educator Resources.
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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?
For more information on BSP, please click here.
Check out NBISC to learn more about NBISC and how to request these biospecimens.
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