The influence of bioregenerative life‐support system dietary structure and lifestyle on the gut microbiota: a 105‐day ground‐based space simulation in Lunar Palace 1

Abstract

Understanding the dynamics of human gut microbiota in space is crucial in maintaining astronaut health. Long-duration and deep-space manned exploration will require the in situ regeneration of resources, which would be achieved by an artificial ecosystem, such as a bioregenerative life-support system (BLSS). Potential response of human gut microbiota to particular lifestyle and dietary structure experienced in a BLSS remains unclear. Here, we report how a BLSS impacts the gut microbiota during a 105-day study that took place in the Chinese Lunar Palace 1 (LP1). The three crewmembers were provided with high-plant and high-fibre diet, and they followed a fixed schedule including extensive labour in the plant cabin. The gut microbiota composition of the three crewmembers showed convergence and similar dynamic change. Increased diversity and abundance of Lachnospira, Faecalibacterium and Blautia indicated that the LP1 dietary structure and the lifestyle may be beneficial for the maintenance of healthy gut microbiome. A stronger impact was found from the gut microbiome to the environment compared with the opposite direction, suggesting the necessity of environmental pathogen control in BLSS.

Gut Microbiome and Space Travelers’ Health: State of the Art and Possible Pro/Prebiotic Strategies for Long-Term Space Missions

“…A parallel experiment, MICHA (MIcrobial ecology of Confined Habitats and humAn health), has instead drawn attention to the microbiology of the environments where space travelers dwell, identifying areas with human activity as hotspots for dispersal and accumulation of crew's microorganisms, especially of potential pathogenic, stress-tolerant or mobile element-bearing microbes (Schwendner et al, 2017). More recently, ground-based space simulations have provided intriguing (although not entirely unequivocal) insights into the possibility of maintaining a eubiotic gut microbiome layout (poor in potential pathobionts while rich in health-promoting SCFA producers) through a bioregenerative life-support system (BLSS), i.e., a confined, selfsustained artificial ecosystem to biologically regenerate O 2 , food, water and other basic living necessities (Hao et al, 2018;Chen et al, 2020). In short, the crewmembers followed a fixed schedule that included contact with plants for several hours a day and a high-plant high-fiber diet.…”

Warming-induced permafrost thaw exacerbates tundra soil carbon decomposition mediated by microbial community

“…Forward and reverse reads with at least a 50 bp overlap and no more than 5% mismatches were joined using FLASH [40]. After removing sequences with ambiguous N bases, joined sequences with lengths between 245 and 260 bp for 16S rRNA, and between 100 and 450 bp for ITS were subjected to chimera removal by U-Chime as previously described [41,42]. OTUs were clustered through Uclust at a 97% similarity level [41].…”

Effects of long term isolation on the emotion change of “Lunar Palace 365” crewmembers

“…Direct contact with plants guides the individual's focus away from stress and enhance their overall quality of life [10]. Finally, BLSS provided the crews with a highplant and high-fiber diet which may also be beneficial for the maintenance of healthy gut microbiome [11,12], and subsequently the mental health via the microbiota gut-brain axis.…”