Blasting into space, bacterial astronauts take one small step to serve humankind (Forwarded)

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Stanford University
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December 18, 2006

Stanford assists NASA Ames in space biology mission

Blasting into space, bacterial astronauts take one small step to serve
humankind

By Clara Moskowitz

Banished from kitchen counters, E. coli, albeit a harmless variety, are
taking to space. On Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006, bacteria hitchhiked into
low-Earth orbit aboard an Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket that took off from the
NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in an experiment to test the
effects of space on living organisms. The GeneSat-1 mission
[http://tia.arc.nasa.gov/genesat1/], a partnership of about 45 scientists
from NASA Ames Research Center, Stanford, Santa Clara University, San Jose
State University and the California Polytechnic State University-San Luis
Obispo, could help scientists better understand the genetic damage and grave
health problems to which humans might be exposed on long space flights.

"This is a toehold into the science of what space does to humans," said
Stanford electrical engineering Professor Gregory Kovacs, who is principal
investigator on the university's contract for the project.

When people spend a long time in microgravity, they can lose bone density,
muscle tone and immune-system rigor. The radiation in space can be so
damaging that by the time astronauts made the almost three-year trip to
Mars, they would stand a high chance of getting cancer, according to a NASA
statement.

By studying what happens to a model organism, E. coli, scientists aim to
understand how space affects living things on a genetic level and hope to
contribute to the development of treatments. The flight also will allow
scientists to test the hardware for use in future experiments.

The two bacterial strains that will be launched in GeneSat-1 were derived
from a strain called K-12 that has been used in research labs for more than
40 years, according to GeneSat-1 Lead Scientist Macarena Parra of Lockheed
Martin, a contractor at NASA Ames. The K-12 strain and all its derivative
strains lack the ability to make certain proteins required for its survival
inside the large intestine. So even if humans were to ingest billions of
cells, the bacteria could do no harm, she said. One of the strains in
GeneSat is considered so safe that it is part of a science activity kit sold
to middle and high schools.

To understand which genes are activated when E. coli endure microgravity and
radiation, the scientists make genes that can glow in the dark when
triggered. "You find a gene you'd like to study and fuse onto it this gene
for green fluorescence," said Stanford electrical engineer Antonio Ricco,
chief technologist for NASA's Astrobionics Program and an architect of the
mission.

For example, if radiation damage occurs, the repair gene is triggered and
glows, acting like a beacon to signal the scientists. "If you do this, you
can make the organism be a living radiation meter," Kovacs said. Once the
scientists know which genes are involved with radiation damage, they can
work to design treatments.

E. coli is an ideal species for this type of experiment, Kovacs said. "The
big thing is that we know [its] genome really well," he said. "And [the
bacteria] can have many, many generations over a very short time." That way
the scientists can watch space's effects play out in the genetic information
passed from parent to offspring within days instead of decades.

Another plus to the mission is that it's small and inexpensive. The whole
experiment is the size of a shoebox, and only 10 pounds. GeneSat-1 uses
miniature technology called CubeSats -- tiny cube-shaped satellites designed
by Robert Twiggs, a consulting professor at Stanford.

The idea for GeneSat-1 arose when John Hines, the mission program manager
and a Stanford alumnus, came across Twiggs' CubeSat webpage while at a
meeting. Kovacs recalls, "John waved me over to his seat and whispered,
'Couldn't we put biological experiments on these?' I immediately said 'Yes!'"

The team constructed GeneSat-1 from three CubeSats. Because the little boxes
are lightweight and compact, they don't cost much to put into space. "The
total price tag on the project was about $8 million, which is relatively
inexpensive for a space mission like this, where we've had to invent and
build much of the technology from scratch," Ricco said.

But designing the project to fit snuggly in the satellite wasn't easy. The
team crafted the mini lab to make sure the E. coli could live and reproduce
in orbit, far from human tending.

"It's difficult enough to keep a closed container of E. coli alive on
Earth," Kovacs said. "It's even harder in space. You have to keep them at
the right temperature, and take out the trash," he said, referring to wastes
the bacteria produce.

Inside the satellite, optical devices will measure the amount of green
fluorescence to find out if the targeted genes are activated. As the
satellite circles the earth, it will transmit data back to the GeneSat
communications center over the SRI antenna located on the hills above the
Stanford campus. Since Saturday, Ricco said, ham radio operators around the
world have been receiving GeneSat-1's radio beacon, and GeneSat-1's primary
transceiver is successfully sending data and receiving commands.

In biology, a critical aspect of understanding new phenomena is repeating
the experiment several times, separated by weeks or months, to prove that
the effect is real and to understand the statistical variations typical of
living systems. "Getting human-tended science experiments into space is
costly and too rare," Ricco said. "But with low-cost, frequent space access
using unmanned hitchhiking satellite experiments, many more experiments can
be done, and repetition of the most important experiments can become
routine."

The biology experiment will begin within 15 days of the rocket launch, and
will run for about four days. At that point, the bacteria will run out of
food, but the satellite will stay in space and continue to make measurements
for about a year, until its orbit begins to decay and it burns up in Earth's
atmosphere.

If everything goes well, the project could give scientists insight into what
goes wrong when living things travel in space. "It's a pretty long path from
these initial studies to human treatments, but you've got to start
somewhere," Ricco said.

[Clara Moskowitz is a science writing intern with Stanford News Service.]

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Editor Note: Science writing intern Clara Moskowitz wrote this release.