Everything in a kit needs to be packaged for one convenient use. There is not that much crew time to go around, since the crew have multiple experiments to manage and also take care of other tasks, such as going on spacewalks to resolve maintenance issues. Anything that is brought in from outside could possibly be a hazard, which is why scientists much make sure that whatever is on a payload will not endanger astronauts or mess with life support systems. The ISS, as Wallace sees it, is a semi-closed system. If something happens, astronauts can’t just wash their hands or roll the window down. Everything in those kits must undergo a tough toxicological assessment to make sure the astronauts are not being exposed to anything dangerous almost 250 miles from the ground. Wallace and Rommel, in collaboration with biologist Emily Gleason of miniPCR and the Genes in Space Program, needed to create custom kits that took both the conditions in space and safety of the crew into account. You can’t just pack up an experiment and launch it to the ISS as is. “While we have come a long way, there is still a lot that could advance the work further.” “We have the capabilities to extract, amplify, purify, prepare sequencing libraries, and sequence nucleic acids onboard the ISS,” Wallace told SYFY WIRE. Aarthi Vijayakumar, Michelle Sung, Rebecca Li, and David Li were the winners who wanted to know if broken DNA could heal in zero-G.Īlong with NASA microbiologists Sarah Rommel and Sarah Wallace, the students recently published a study in PLOS ONE. National Lab, which has really become more like a molecular laboratory in space. Genes in Space picks the brains of teen scientists in grades 7 through 12 to come up with a DNA analysis experiment that can be carried out in the ISS U.S. DNA damage or breakage can mean the potential for degenerative diseases such as cancer, but the fact that it can also self-repair (and in microgravity!) has enormous implications for medical treatments above and below Earth’s atmosphere. This is what a CRISPR experiment that won the Genes in Space 6 contest - SYFY WIRE was at the recent launch of the Genes in Space 8 experiment to the ISS - found out.

If in space, no one can hear you scream, then what happens when DNA silently breaks in microgravity? Spoiler alert: it heals itself.

Nasa astronauts space used crispr first