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Cross Kingdom Analysis of Data Within the GeneLab Repository Identifies a Potential Conserved Response of Life to the Stress Associated with SpaceflightIt is important to determine the health risks and potential survival for astronauts associated with long-term space missions. This entails not only understanding the impact the space environment will have on humans, but also how it will affect other organisms needed for humans to survive in space such as plants. In addition, it has been reported in the literature that hundreds of genes seem to be conserved and/or transferred between different organisms from bacteria, archaea, fungi, microorganisms, and plants to animals. Since space travel involves humans in a closed environment over a long period of time, we hypothesize that potential conserved biological factors will occur between the different organisms in that environment possibly due to transfer of genes. Determining the conserved factors that are commonly being regulated in space can shed insight into possible universal master regulators and also determine the symbiotic relationship between the organisms in space. Utilizing NASA's GeneLab Data Repository (a rapidly expanding, curated clustering of spaceflight-related ‘omics-level datasets for all organisms), we were able to uncover a novel pathway and factors that were commonly shared between humans, mice, plants, C. Elegans, and drosophilas. Through ChIP-Seq enrichment analysis techniques utilizing various GeneLab datasets from each species that were flown in space, we found the following factors to be conserved across all species: oxidative stress, DNA damage (through GABPA/NRFs and NFY), SIX5, GTF2B and glutamine synthetase. Such commonalities would likely reflect the effects of factors such as microgravity and the increased radiation exposure inherent in spaceflight on basic physical processes shared by all biological systems at the cellular level. Differences between organismal responses revealed by GeneLab's data should also help understand the unique reactions to life in space that arise from the very different lifestyles of microbes, animals and plants.
Document ID
20190033196
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Presentation
Authors
Barker, Richard
(Wisconsin Univ. Madison, WI, United States)
Weitz, Eric
(Broad Institute Cambridge, MA, United States)
Silveira, Willian do
(Queen's University Belfast Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom)
McDonald, Tyson
(Hampton Univ. VA, United States)
Reinsch, Sigrid
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Vandenbrink, Josh
(Louisiana Tech Univ. Ruston, LA, United States)
Gilroy, Simon
(Wisconsin Univ. Madison, WI, United States)
Beheshti, Afshin
(Wyle Labs., Inc. Moffett Field, CA, United States)
McKenna, Neil
(Baylor Coll. of Medicine Houston, TX, United States)
Date Acquired
November 25, 2019
Publication Date
November 20, 2019
Subject Category
Life Sciences (General)
Report/Patent Number
ARC-E-DAA-TN69366
Report Number: ARC-E-DAA-TN69366
Meeting Information
Meeting: American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR)
Location: Denver, CO
Country: United States
Start Date: November 20, 2019
End Date: November 23, 2019
Sponsors: American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR)
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNA14AB82C
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
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