Chemical & Engineering News
Maybe the most interesting part is this:Spaceflight is no picnic for the body. Muscles atrophy, bones thin, arteries stiffen, inflammation spikes, vision deteriorates—and that’s just for starters. But a new study shows that these disparate effects might have a common cause: out-of-whack activity in mitochondria, the energy-producing compartments in living cells (Cell 2020, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.11.002). The study is one of a collection of papers on the biological effects of spaceflight published last week in Cell.
Link to journal paperAn obvious next step, Beheshti says, is to study whether pharmaceutical therapies that are already approved to treat mitochondrial diseases or known nutritional interventions that support these organelles’ function might alleviate some of the negative effects of space radiation and antigravity.
Abstract:
Spaceflight is known to impose changes on human physiology with unknown molecular etiologies. To reveal these causes, we used a multi-omics, systems biology analytical approach using biomedical profiles from fifty-nine astronauts and data from NASA’s GeneLab derived from hundreds of samples flown in space to determine transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and epigenetic responses to spaceflight. Overall pathway analyses on the multi-omics datasets showed significant enrichment for mitochondrial processes, as well as innate immunity, chronic inflammation, cell cycle, circadian rhythm, and olfactory functions. Importantly, NASA’s Twin Study provided a platform to confirm several of our principal findings. Evidence of altered mitochondrial function and DNA damage was also found in the urine and blood metabolic data compiled from the astronaut cohort and NASA Twin Study data, indicating mitochondrial stress as a consistent phenotype of spaceflight.
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Originally Posted by Swift
