An ‘elegant’ interview
After my bad experience interviewing fruit-flies, today my boss came to me saying I should interview someone who has been referred to as “elegant”… “And transparent,” she added with a smile. She’s a good boss, my boss is. I know she trusts me and that she values my work. The fruit-fly experience is now in the past. So I dutifully phoned the number the boss gave me and transcribed.
Good morning professor, thanks for agreeing to this interview with Outpost 42!
My pleasure, for my colleagues and myself it is a duty and a pleasure to make a small contribution to science and its outreach.
You are very kind, professor. I know you will take care of an experiment to improve the health of astronauts on long-duration missions. What is it?
Together with other colleagues, I work on the EPIGENETICS experiment: we try to understand how living in weightlessness can induce inheritable genetic modifications without changes in the DNA sequence.
But DNA is genetic register is it not? If it does not change, it cannot transmit differences from past mutations. Am I wrong?
Well, some changes that do not correspond to a changed DNA can be inherited. The DNA remains the same, but the way it is expressed changes. A simple comparison would be when different actors perform the same play. The script will remain the same, but its interpretation is different. The science that studies these kind of changes is called epigenetics.
Aside from this example, where do you see such a mechanism in everyday life?
A classic example is cell differentiation: some cells specialise, but do not change their basic DNA structure. Some recent studies suggest that epigenetic changes may also have an impact on aging and on tumors.
Let’s go back to the astronauts and space. Why do you want to do this experiment in reduced gravity?
We want to understand how a cell that has adapted to space can transmit its adaptation to the next generation of cells. Bones and muscles of astronauts undergo changes in long-duration missions: our experiment is aimed to better understand if there are changes at the level of each cell and what the link is between adaptation and mutation epigenetics.
I’m curious to see how you conduct the experiment. In her blog Samantha Cristoforetti seems to be having a lot of fun with Epigenetics.
It is because we are involved.
Understandably so Professor, you and your colleagues are certainly charismatic people. What I meant to ask was with which organisms are you conducting the experiment? Please do not tell me that it is those arrogant fruit-flies!
[laughs]. We do not need fruit flies, our involvement is enough.
You and Samantha of course. I imagine that you follow our astronaut step by step from Earth as she deals with the organisms of study, are they bacteria?
Look [he keeps laughing], there is a misunderstanding here. We are on the station together with Samantha.
In what sense?
In the only way possible. We are there with her: when we launched we were larvae. Then we awakened with a good bacterial nourishment: some of us were put in a centrifuge that simulates gravity while others were left free to float in zero-gravity. Once mature, we reproduced: the adults were taken away and put in the refrigerator (called MELFI) to be analysed on ground while the larvae continued eating and growing happily for five days. This process is repeated: adults are popped in the fridge and the second-generation larvae allowed to grow. And so on, for four generations… Why are you not saying anything? Have you lost interest?
Professor … who you are you?
I am a worm, of course.
What? Worms? I’m talking on the phone with a worm?
I am a Caenorhabditis elegans, in fact. I have the honour of being able to enjoy a certain elegance. Is it a problem? Think about it: we are just a millimetre long, and we are totally transparent, allowing researchers to observe our internal organs under a microscope easily. And we are almost all hermaphrodites. Hello? Hello? Anyone on the line? Mr. interviewer … we have to go, the MELFI awaits us: goodbye, then, we’ll tell Samantha you said “hi”!
Stefano Sandrelli
To learn more about the Epigenetics experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1075.html Cover image: Caenorhabditis elegans — a millimeter-long roundworm with a genetic makeup scientists understand — will be central to a pair of Japan Aerospace Agency investigations into muscle and bone loss of astronauts on the International Space Station in the first few months of 2015. Image Credit: NASA06/02/2015
Then it means you are useless since we already know about these diseases in humans, what is your purpose?
Look, try switching on your brain, please. Scientists know about the genetic diseases of humans, but it is difficult to study the genetic transmission of a disease as it spans the lifetime of a human being, around 70-80 years. We reproduce very fast: our life spans a couple of your weeks and each female lays around 600 eggs. Get where we are going? Our genome is transmitted in real-time, “live” in front of scientists eyes, to many descendants.
From your reaction it seems as though you still do not get it, do you?
But how many are going to space?
We start with a little more than 100. It is the mechanism of genetic transmission that interests scientists, understand? And we show it to them, generation after generation.
But why on the International Space Station?
Because there is no gravity up there. And gravity could be an important part of genetic transmission. Our scientists have created a beautiful experiment!
Tell me more … how does it work?
The Fruit Lab System has three components: a small housing compartment in which we launch. A second compartment is where we live and get fed and where our larvae are extracted.
What do the astronauts do with your larvae? Do they eat them? Are you fresh food?
What??? Where do you come from? The larvae are stored in a refrigerator called MELFI where our offspring are preserved and brought back to Earth for further study.
There is a third housing compartment, where we can fly freely, assuming we are not affected by weightlessness too much. Here scientists mounted a camera to watch us 24 hours a day. A sort of Big Brother for fruit flies. A number of us live in weightlessness while others live in a small centrifuge to simulate Earth’s gravity. The larvae we produce are frozen, brought back to earth and studied.
Are you really convinced that something interesting for mankind may come out of this?
Of course, this is what we aim for and the scientists whom we are trying to help. We have been helping humans to understand how their bodies function for over a century!
If you want to educate yourself, we have a dedicated blog on this experiment:
Once the daily activities are completed, it is time for the eDPC (“evening Daily Planning Conference”). This is “goodnight” time: interactions with the crew on the Space-to-Ground voice channels are interrupted to allow them some well-deserved rest time, we also switch off any camera inside the space station! Only in case of contingency scenarios the Ground Teams would make contact again.