Traveling, living and working in space is now a reality. The number of people and length of time in space is increasing. With new horizons for exploration it becomes more important to fully understand and provide countermeasures to the effects of the space environment on the human body. In addition, space provides a unique laboratory to study how life and physiologic functions adapt from the cellular level to that of the entire organism. Caenorhabditis elegans is a genetic model organism used to study physiology on Earth. Here we provide a description of the rationale, design, methods, and space culture validation of the ICE-FIRST payload, which engaged C. elegans researchers from four nations. Here we also show C. elegans growth and development proceeds essentially normally in a chemically defined liquid medium on board the International Space Station (10.9 day round trip). By setting flight constraints first and bringing together established C. elegans researchers second, we were able to use minimal stowage space to successfully return a total of 53 independent samples, each containing more than a hundred individual animals, to investigators within one year of experiment concept. We believe that in the * Corresponding author. Address: School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health, University of Nottingham, Derby City Hospital, Derby DE22 3DT, UK. Tel.: +44 1332 724615. E-mail address: nate@alumni.cmu.edu (N.J. Szewczyk)..
NIH Public Access
BACKGROUND How neurons and neuronal circuits transform sensory input into behavior is not well understood. Because of its well-described, simple nervous system, Caenorhabditis elegans is an ideal model organism to study this issue. Transformation of sensory signals into neural activity is a crucial first step in the sensory-motor transformation pathway in an animal's nervous system. We examined the properties of chemosensory ASK neurons of C. elegans during sensory stimulation.METHOD A genetically encoded calcium sensor protein, G-CaMP, was expressed in ASK neurons of C. elegans, and the intracellular calcium dynamics of the neurons were observed. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE Analysis of sensory-motor transformation pathways based on the activity and structure of neuronal circuits is an important goal in neurobiology and is practical in C. elegans. Our study provides insights into the mechanism of such transformation in the animal.
RESULTS
The first International Caenorhabditis elegans Experiment (ICE-First) was carried out using a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from April 19-30, 2004. This experiment was a part of the program of the DELTA (Dutch Expedition for Life science Technology and Atmospheric research) mission, and the space agencies that participate in the International Space Station (ISS) program formed international research teams. A Japanese research team that conducted by Japan aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) investigated the following aspects of the organism: (1) whether meiotic chromosomal dynamics and apoptosis in the germ cells were normal under microgravity conditions, (2) the effect of the space flight on muscle cell development, and (3) the effect of the space flight on protein aggregation. In this article, we summarize the results of these biochemical and molecular biological analyses.
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