nasa astronauts crispr gene technology first

It’s hoped that the same organisms could thrive on Earth in contaminated and otherwise marginal lands.įurther, CUBES scientists are working to create nutrient-giving plants that could grow in areas with restricted space, light, water and soil fecundity. “We think of this as designing sustainable manufacturing for the next planet we visit, as well as for Earth, which is rapidly transforming due to the impact of its human population.”ĬUBES’ core work is in creating engineered plants and microbes to grow functional foods, medicines and materials using Mars’ typically incompatible atmospheric gases and nutrient-free substrate, the planetary surface layer known as regolith. “We’re concerned about the worlds that we’re going to visit, as we’re concerned about our current world,” says Arkin. Synthetic biology, by redesigning organisms for useful purposes and engineering them to have new abilities, could be just the panacea. The longer humans are out there, the more resources they will need to make on site.Īt CUBES, Arkin is leading efforts to create zero-waste biomanufacturing systems in “Mars-like conditions” - for travel to the planet as well as continued inhabitation. Current efforts include NASA’s Artemis program, which foresees bases on the moon, and Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef space station.

In the meantime, there’s a need to support humans for sustained stays in locations closer to Earth. But the astronauts will need something akin to an extraterrestrial “starter kit” - one that not only allows for total self-sufficiency, but also uses systems that are self-sustaining, recycling everything that is used. A mission could still be at least a decade away, according to Arkin. Everything has to be easy to operate and use resources hyper-efficiently and cleanly.”įor now, the researchers are working with a limited goal: supporting nine astronauts on a 12-month voyage to and back from Mars, with an intervening stay of 550 days.

“We want you to take something you can grow from seed - plants, bacteria, fungi and viruses - that can start out as small frozen stocks and grow into an entire factory, so we’re designing a self-reproducing, integrated biomanufacturing system,” he adds. “You can start out your trip with a huge truck of everything you need, but it’s expensive, and if things go wrong, you’ve lost your truck and that’s the end of it. Richard Newton Memorial Professor of Bioengineering. “We want to be able to provide food, pharmaceuticals and materials for astronauts, on demand,” says Arkin, the Dean A. And they’ve put Arkin at the apogee of scientific inquiry. A lack of light makes photosynthesis - the process in which plants use light energy for growth - virtually impossible without some form of amplification.īut for national space agency officials - CUBES is a NASA Science Technology Research Institute - the once improbable has become the art of the possible. The uninviting environs lack oxygen and liquid water, and atmospheric temperatures are an enervating -80 degrees Fahrenheit. Getting there is no easy feat, and neither is sustaining life, given Mars’ limited natural resources. With NASA’s successful landing of the Perseverance rover in Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021, the possibility of human colonization on the planet seems even more likely. Our presence on Mars, it turns out, is no longer the stuff of science fiction. There, a pale red speck, millions of miles away in the cosmos, captivates his imagination and informs his work. As the rest of the neighborhood sleeps, the director of Berkeley’s Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES) looks skyward to motivate himself for the coming day. There's a chance CRISPR might play an important role in getting humans to Mars and beyond.Every morning at 2:30, Adam Arkin awakens from his short night’s slumber.

That, in turn, could help NASA and other agencies develop technology that shields astronauts and makes deep space exploration practical. With enough work, the scientists hope they can replicate the genetic damage from ionizing radiation, not to mention other effects from long-term spaceflight. The new approach clears the way for other research around DNA repair in space. Koch completed the test well before this (most of the supplies reached the ISS in May 2019), but the findings weren't available until this past week. The experiment produced a particularly damaging double-strand DNA break in a yeast cell culture aboard the International Space Station. But now, CRISPR gene editing is no longer confined to Earth. Astronauts Christina Koch and scientists have successfully demonstrated CRISPR-Cas9 in space for the first time, using it as part of a new technique to damage DNA and study how it repairs in microgravity.Īccording to the researchers, 'Technical and safety concerns' had prevented earlier studies.

Nasa astronauts crispr gene technology first