TAGES Experiment Onboard the International Space Station (ISS)

0:09The APEX 3-2 Tejas Experiment is a follow on, in a way, a follow on experiment of our earlier Tejas experiment that flew on Apex 1. The experiment uses the same organism, Arabidopsis thaliana, the model organism of the plant world. What we've done with this experiment is we've engineered them with a number of different green fluorescent reporter genes that we're going to be following specific expression patterns using the L&M Microscope. And in addition, a number of the Arabidopsis lines that we're using in the APEX 3 Experiment are mutants in certain genes that we found were important the last experiment that we did in space flight. For instance, in the previous experiment, we found that a number the genes that are involved in cell wall remodeling are the ones that

0:57are engaged in spaceflight. So one of the things that we wanted to do with the current experiment is specifically look at particular mutants in Arabidopsis and also different types of reporter genes that allow us to ask some of the questions that arose from the answers we got in the last experiment. As a laboratory, we are plant molecular biologists who are interested in space flight and as a novel environment, as something that's outside the evolutionary experience of plants. And what the APEX-2 experiment does, APEC-3-2 experiment does is look at Arabidopsis thaliana and how it responds both at the molecular genetic level as far as what genes are turned on and turned off biochemically and also using

1:42live imaging with the LMM like microscopy module to look at specific reporter genes we've engineered to give us specific locations for where these genes are happening in real time. We are using a new piece of hardware that is the LMM, the Light Microscopy Module. And what that allows us to do in our first APEX experiment, what we did is we used the Green Fluorescent Imaging System, the GIS, that's on orbit in the ABERS unit, to collect real-time images of the entire petri plate that our plants are growing upon and that gave us fluorescent gene expression data as well as root growth data and such which was 08. But what the LMM allows us to do is take things a little step further, and we can now

2:24look at individual roots not only at the macro level but at the microscopic level, and not only just on the surface of those roots, but we can tunnel in a little bit by taking different focal planes of the same root and look deep inside the root tip to see which cells are expressing some of the green fluorescent protein genes in which we're interested. And that gives us a whole new dynamic to ask, well how are plants responding and where are those cells changing inside those roots. And that gives us much more dynamic range of gene expression patterns on orbit than we were able to get before. The two space centers that we've worked with, Kennedy Space Center and the Glenn Research Center work together because they have two

3:08different aspects of how they facilitate our experiment. Of course at Kennedy we have the to launch. And what Kennedy also does is supports us in terms of the infrastructure and doing the ground control experiments, also doing all the pre-testing, what we call the space flight, the science verification test, the payload verification test. All that stuff is taken care of by Kennedy Space Center. Glenn Research Center comes into the deal because they have got the very specific type of hardware that we'd like to utilize on orbit, LMM. So the light microscopy module now allows us to take a closer and deeper look at some of the gene expression patterns that we can be revealed by some of these fluorescent reporter

3:49genes that we've engineered into our experiment. So GRC handles not only the experiment itself from the imaging point of view, but it also has been very good about allowing us access to the people and to the ground unit for the LMM both before to tweak the systems and also So test some of the new parameters that we would like to explore. Part of what I find most exciting about doing what we would call space biology is taking our biology, you know, the stuff that we live with on a day-to-day basis, our plants, ourselves, anything, is taking it to an environment that is, and I've said this before, outside our realm of experience, outside of our evolutionary experience. And it is fascinating to me to see how a terrestrial organism functions in that kind

4:38of environment. And so for me, that's part of the most exciting bit from the science end of things is to see, you know, how the genes change, how plants change, you now, how all this comes together in adjusting to something new and something novel. It's also very exciting to be part of a pioneering group of going out and exploring new avenues of research, new environments, new platforms of doing this kind of research. And fundamentally myself and humans in general we're explorers and I feel like this is what's next.