When NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission lifts off on August 29, there will be four science experiments on board — including one from Canada.
UBC Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences Dr. Corey Nislow is sending cultures of yeast and algae into space, in a capsule not much bigger than a shoebox, to study the effects of cosmic rays and near-zero gravity on living organisms.
When the spacecraft returns from its 42-day orbit around the moon without a crew, Dr. Nislow will receive his samples back, along with the information they contain.
In this Q&A, he explains what NASA’s project could mean for medical advances on Earth and in space.
What exactly are you sending into space and why?
We chose to study Chlamydomonas reinhardtii – a single-celled green alga – and 6,000 yeast mutants. They will be bred for up to seven generations until Orion (the spacecraft used for the Artemis mission) completes its journey to the far side of the Moon. Yeast is a good model for human cells because its genes are somewhat similar to human genes, while C. reinhardtii was chosen because it is a model plant and a valuable source of food, molecular oxygen, and hydrogen for fuel.
What happens when you get the samples back?
We will study the genetic changes caused by space exposure using our UBC lab’s database of 10 million gene-drug interactions and information gleaned from 20 years of studying these organisms. The information we get can help develop better treatments for future space travelers and for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
As an example, we seek to understand whether the genome-wide signature of yeast in response to cosmic radiation resembles that observed in cells exposed to DNA-damaging cancer drugs. Our preliminary data suggests the answer is yes. In doing so, the Artemis mission will provide us with important guidance on how to develop countermeasures to combat radiation damage to both yeast and crew members’ DNA, as well as ways to minimize the side effects of various chemotherapies.
What else should we know about this experiment?
For the first time in 50 years, biological materials will leave low Earth orbit, battle exposure to cosmic radiation, and then be returned to our laboratory for detailed molecular analysis. We will bring modern biotechnology to the unique environment of cosmic radiation combined with microgravity.
The upcoming Artemis 1 flight is a test flight for a future lunar mission that will return humans to the moon. This will set the stage for longer explorations – NASA has announced a goal of going to Mars with astronauts in the 2030s or soon after. Being a part of such a historic project is an amazing opportunity.
Interview Language(s): English (Nislow and PhD student Hamid Kian Gaikani), Farsi (Gaikani)
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