Astronaut Dave Wolf checks on the Tulane Environmental Astrobiology Center's rat kidney cell experiment while still on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. These cells were transferred to the Space Station Mir, where they will be kept under conditions of weightlessness for the four months until Wolf returns to Earth.
Kidney cells differentiate when the shear stress to which they are exposed is changed. While cells are exposed to constant shear stress here on Earth, these stresses are reduced to zero in the weightless environment of outer space. By sending cells into outer space, the effects of microgravity on the genetic expression of cells and how gravity affects shear stress responses can be examined, in addition to determining if other gravity-dependent genes exist.
NASA has built a new a cell culture incubator, the Biological Specimen Temperature Controller (BSTC). This hardware was delivered to Mir on the space shuttle Atlantis, along with twelve incubator bags like the one Wolf is looking at (left) containing various cells. These include: bags containing rat kidney cells from our lab, bags containing PC12 chromaffin (adrenal) cells from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Clinical Campus, and bags containing lymphocytes (cellular immunity mediators) from the NASA Johnson Space Center.
Samples have been periodically withdrawn and stored for subsequent molecular and genetic analysis on Earth at the Environmental Astrobiology Center.
More pictures of Dave Wolf and the crew onboard the space station.
Click here to watch our movie of the shuttle launch! (1.7MB, so it takes a while to load!)
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