Title
Comparative analysis of Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans gene expression experiments in the European Soyuz flights to the International Space Station
Date Issued
01 January 2007
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Leandro L.J.
Szewczyk N.J.
Benguría A.
Herranz R.
Medina F.J.
Gasset G.
van Loon J.
Conley C.A.
Marco R.
Departamento de Bioquímica
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
The European Soyuz missions have been one of the main routes for conducting scientific experiments onboard the International Space Station, which is currently in the construction phase. A relatively large number of life and physical sciences experiments as well as technology demonstrations have been carried out during these missions. Included among these experiments are the Gene experiment during the Spanish "Cervantes" Soyuz mission and the ICE-1st experiment during the Dutch "Delta" mission. In both experiments, full genome microarray analyses were carried out on RNA extracted from whole animals recovered from the flight. These experiments indicated relatively large scale changes in gene expression levels in response to spaceflight for two popular model systems, Drosophila melanogaster (Gene) and Caenorabditis elegans (ICE-1st). Here we report a comparative analysis of results from these two experiments. Finding orthologous genes between the fruit fly and the nematode was far from straightforward, reducing the number of genes that we could compare to roughly 20% of the full comparative genome. Within this sub-set of the data (2286 genes), only six genes were found to display identical changes between species (decreased) while 1809 genes displayed no change in either species. Future experiments using ground simulation techniques will allow producing a better, more comprehensive picture of the putative set of genes affected in multicellular organisms by changes in gravity and getting a deeper understanding of how animals respond and adapt to spaceflight. © 2007 COSPAR.
Start page
506
End page
512
Volume
40
Issue
4
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Astronomía Ingeniería aeroespacial
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-34547498438
Source
Advances in Space Research
ISSN of the container
02731177
Sponsor(s)
The support of the all organizations and people involved in the Cervantes and Delta missions, the Spanish Space Program (Spanish Ministery of Education and Science), the Dutch Space Program, ESA, the CNES and NASA that made possible this work is gratefully acknowledged. National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales CNES Ecological Society of Australia ESA
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus