This plant experiment uses as, a subject, Arabidodpsis Thaliana, a classic model plant for research. Since we know a lot about the molecular biology of Arabidopsis, it’s the perfect candidate to observe what changes are induced by the spaceflight environment! In fact, gene expression has been shown to change in response to weightlessness, leading to modifications in root structure, growth and remodeling of the cell wall in space.
For APEX-03, seedlings of Arabodopsis will be flown to space in petri plates, wrapped in a dark cloth to prevent exposure to light before the experiment start. The plates will then be inserted into the Veggie facility for growth – and here is some info about Veggie: https://www.nasa.gov/content/veggie-plant-growth-system-activated-on-international-space-station/#.U8qXO7GTHZc
Different samples will be allowed to grow for a different number of days, before crewmembers will photo-document the end state and perform the harvesting and fixation operations It’s not a difficult task, but it does require some attention: the roots are very delicate and you really don’t want to damage them when you pick them with forceps from their jelly-like nutrient substrate to insert them in the fixation tube (that you can see in the picture). One they’re safely in there, you install an actuator and start to turn a handle to move a piston inside the tube. This floods the chamber containing the plant samples with a chemical preservative that freezes the molecular state of the plant.
Tubes are then conserved in the MELFI freezer until they can be returned to Earth for post-flight analysis.
Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42
avamposto42.esa.int
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/
(Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí:
https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/
19/07/2014