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Pan‐omic Approaches to Study the Effects of Microgravity on Host Responses to Toxins
Author(s) -
Waddy Edward,
Chakraborty Nabarun,
Gautam Aarti,
Santos William,
Hoke Allison,
Jett Marti,
Hammamieh Rasha
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.26.1_supplement.1085.12
Subject(s) - in silico , host (biology) , biology , lipopolysaccharide , computational biology , virulence , bioreactor , microbiology and biotechnology , innate immune system , immunology , immune system , gene , genetics , botany
Microgravity, as indicated by previous studies, enhances bacterial virulence but depresses a host's immunity cascade. Presumably, pathogenic insults occurring in space may trigger altered immunological pathways in host cells. Understanding this paradigm is essential to establishing proper wound care management. A host toxin model was designed to address this research hypothesis and was executed aboard the Space Transportation System (STS)‐135. Preparatory ground work focused on designing a bioreactor‐based experimental model that could be integrated with the Cell Culture Module (CCM); which is semi‐automated equipment that was previously operated in space. Human microvascular endothelial cells were inoculated in 6 bioreactors on the ground, and the CCM supported these cells for the first 10 d of flight. Four bioreactors batched in 2 were exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin commonly found in gram‐negative bacteria, for two different time periods (4 h and 8 h). At the end of each time point the cells were fixed and maintained in a fixed state until after the STS‐135 landed. Molecular samples extracted from the retrieved cells were found to have good integrity. A high throughput pan‐omics study, followed by in silico data analysis, is underway to identify the genomic signatures and pathways, and disease footprints corresponding to microgravity induced immunity cascades.