Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
As part of the agency’s ongoing research into how the human body responds to an extended period of time in microgravity environments, NASA officials announced on Friday that it plans to send osteocyte cultures to the International Space Station for the first time.
The cultures will be transported to the ISS on a SpaceX commercial resupply mission scheduled to lift off today, and the NASA Osteocytes and mechano-transduction (Osteo-4) investigation team will analyze the effects of microgravity on this type of bone cell, the agency said.
Searching for causes of space-related bone density loss
The research is essential as NASA plans future missions into deep space, as well as a potential manned mission to Mars, which will require astronauts to spend more time in space than ever before. Analyzing the osteocyte cultures will build upon previous research that identified a loss of bone mass in crewmembers following long-duration missions.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantee Dr. Paola Divieti Pajevic, principal investigator of the Osteo-4 study and his colleagues will examine the function and behavior of isolated osteocytes in microgravity to determine how they may contribute to that decline in bone density.
“We are investigating how osteocytes – the most abundant cells in the adult skeleton – both sense and respond to changes in mechanical forces, as achieved aboard the space station,” she explained, adding that the results of the research could also have implications for treating bone disorders and metabolic diseases such as osteoporosis on Earth.
Hunting for genetic signal changes due to microgravity exposure
Osteocytes are cells that sense mechanical forces such as weight lifting when they are applied to the skeleton, the researchers explained. They turn those forces into biological responses, sending signals to other cells to make or remove bone, and if they can solve the mysteries of bone loss in astronauts, they could find way to combat it or produce new bone in space.
Dr. Divieti Pajevic and her associates are using samples from one specific line of bone cells in mice which mimic the bone osteocytes of humans in terms of gene expression, a process in which information programmed in a gene is used to direct the assembly of a protein molecule that then carries out the instructions given to that cell for its role. The researchers will attempt to isolate the genetic signals that change in those cells following exposure to microgravity.
For the Osteo-4 study, the osteocytes will be grown in a synthetic, tissue-like, 3D structure and housed inside bioreactors that allow them to grow in a protected environment. Each tray will house three individual bioreactors, creating a total of nine samples for study on the ISS. Once those samples have arrived in space and are exposed to that environment, the station crew members will freeze them at intervals of three, five, seven, or eight days.
Freezing the osteocytes will stop changes in the cells and allow the researchers to look at the differences at early and later stages of exposure to microgravity, the Osteo-4 team explained. The frozen samples will then be returned to Earth on the SpaceX Dragon capsule where they can be analyzed further in the hopes of increasing our understanding of their overall function.
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