Proteomics and genomics of microgravity

Abstract

Many serious adverse physiological changes occur during spaceflight. In the search for underlying mechanisms and possible new countermeasures, many experimental tools and methods have been developed to study microgravity caused physiological changes, ranging from in vitro bioreactor studies to spaceflight investigations. Recently, genomic and proteomic approaches have gained a lot of attention; after major scientific breakthroughs in the fields of genomics and proteomics, they are now widely accepted and used to understand biological processes. Understanding gene and/or protein expression is the key to unfolding the mechanisms behind microgravity-induced problems and, ultimately, finding effective countermeasures to spaceflight-induced alterations. Significant progress has been made in identifying the genes/proteins responsible for these changes. Although many of these genes and/or proteins were observed to be either upregulated or downregulated, however, no large-scale genomics and proteomics studies have been published so far. This review aims at summarizing the current status of microgravity-related genomics and proteomics studies and stimulating large-scale proteomics and genomics research activities.

Proteomic Analysis of Mouse Hypothalamus under Simulated Microgravity

“…Microgravity is a hostile environment for living species the microgravity environment induces stress as evidenced by data obtained from animal studies performed in real space shuttle missions and also in simulated microgravity conditions [2,8,9]. The ground-based model for studying microgravity used in this study causes shifting of fluids in the brain, similar to that experienced by astronauts in space.…”

“…The changes were seen in balance, eye movements and reflex control of cardiovascular, respiratory and gastrointestinal functions [1,2]. These activities are directly or indirectly related to the changes that occur due to the activity of the brain under zero gravity in space.…”

“…Effort towards understanding the gene and protein expression changes under microgravity has revealed the involvement of oxidative stress induced distorted signaling events [2]. Moreover microarray analysis showed changes in the pattern of global gene expression in skeletal muscle of rats that had been in space [8].…”

Chronic exposure to simulated space conditions predominantly affects cytoskeleton remodeling and oxidative stress response in mouse fetal fibroblasts

“…SRF was shown to be mediated by the Rho signaling pathway (25)(26)(27), which may have been triggered by the RPM. Rho signaling is believed to be an important pathway for focal adhesion assembly and cytoskeleton remodeling in response to cellular tension stress (28) and has been suggested to play a role in the microgravity response (21,(29)(30)(31). Furthermore, Rho GTPase activities were shown to be increased in dermal fibroblasts subjected to simulated microgravity for 30 and 120 min, thereafter decreasing to reach similar values to those of the CTRL at 48 h of treatment (32).…”

“…While it has been shown in various cell types that cytoskeleton remodeling starts immediately after exposure to simulated or real microgravity (21,(29)(30)(31), few studies investigated the effects of IR on the cytoskeleton. However, therapeutic doses of irradiation were shown to affect cell permeability of microvascular endothelial cells through Rho-mediated cytoskeleton remodeling (37).…”