Abstract
Background: Ionizing radiation from galactic cosmic rays (GCR) is one of the major risk factors that will impact the health of astronauts on extended missions outside the protective effects of the Earth’s magnetic field. The NASA GeneLab project has detailed information on radiation exposure using animal models with curated dosimetry information for spaceflight experiments. Methods: We analyzed multiple GeneLab omics datasets associated with both ground-based and spaceflight radiation studies that included in vivo and in vitro approaches. A range of ions from protons to iron particles with doses from 0.1 to 1.0 Gy for ground studies, as well as samples flown in low Earth orbit (LEO) with total doses of 1.0 mGy to 30 mGy, were utilized. Results: From this analysis, we were able to identify distinct biological signatures associating specific ions with specific biological responses due to radiation exposure in space. For example, we discovered changes in mitochondrial function, ribosomal assembly, and immune pathways as a function of dose. Conclusions: We provided a summary of how the GeneLab’s rich database of omics experiments with animal models can be used to generate novel hypotheses to better understand human health risks from GCR exposures.
Highlights
Space is a hostile environment, and human space travel will entail effects at many levels of biological organization leading to related physiological effects
Analysis was completed by subject matter experts from the Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG), Johnson Space
To compare the number of genes sets with the annotated gene sets, we provided heatmaps and clustering for all the datasets based on the normalized enrichment scores (NES) for each molecular signature database collection for the analysis with the false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.25 (Figure 4)
Summary
Space is a hostile environment, and human space travel will entail effects at many levels of biological organization leading to related physiological effects. Ionizing radiation in space is composed of a complex mixture of particles including protons from the sun and galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) originating from outside the solar system. A major risk-factor for human spaceflight is exposure GCR HZE that can cause DNA damage that is unrepaired or mis-repaired [1]. Ionizing radiation from galactic cosmic rays (GCR) is one of the major risk factors that will impact the health of astronauts on extended missions outside the protective effects of the Earth’s magnetic field. Conclusions: We provided a summary of how the GeneLab’s rich database of omics experiments with animal models can be used to generate novel hypotheses to better understand human health risks from GCR exposures
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