NASA Spaceline Current Awareness List #1,001 27 May 2022 (Space Life Science Research Results)

 

Call for articles to cite in the weekly lists: Authors at NASA Centers and NASA PIs—do you have an article that has recently published or will publish in the upcoming weeks within a peer-reviewed journal and is in the scope of space life sciences? If so, send it our way! Send your article to the email address mentioned above. Articles received by Wednesday will appear within that week’s list—articles received after Wednesday will appear the following week.

 

Papers deriving from NASA support:

 

1

Holden K, Greene M, Vincent E, Sándor A, Thompson S, Feiveson A, Munson B.

Hum Factors. 2022 May 24;187208221084486. Online ahead of print.

PI: K. Holden

Note: ISS results.

Journal Impact Factor: 2.888

Funding: “This study was funded by the NASA Human Research Program and performed as part of the Human Health and Performance Contract #NNJ15HK11B at the NASA Johnson Space Center.”

 

2

Desai RI, Limoli CL, Stark CEL, Stark SM.

Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2022 Jul;138:104676. Review.

PI: C.L. Limoli/NSCOR

Note: From the abstract: “The response of the human body to multiple spaceflight stressors is complex, but mounting evidence implicate risks to CNS [central nervous system] functionality as significant, able to threaten metrics of mission success and longer-term behavioral and neurocognitive health. Prolonged exposure to microgravity, sleep disruption, social isolation, fluid shifts, and ionizing radiation have been shown to disrupt mechanisms of homeostasis and neurobiological well-being. The overarching goal of this review was to document the existing evidence of how the major spaceflight stressors, including radiation, microgravity, isolation/confinement, and sleep deprivation, alone or in combination alter molecular, neurochemical, neurobiological, and plasma metabolite/lipid signatures that may be linked to operationally-relevant behavioral and cognitive performance.”

Journal Impact Factor: 8.989

Funding: “This work was supported by grant number TXS0147017 (RID) from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NASA Johnson Space Center and from NASA NSCOR grant number NNX15AI22G (CLL). All opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the authors and not necessarily those of NASA. We would also like to thank Dr. Joshua Alwood (NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA) and Dr. Alexander C. Stahn (Perelman School of Medicine, Research Section for Behavioral Regulation and Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA) for their contribution on this project as expert consultants on microgravity and isolation/confinement, respectively, as well as for reviewing and providing valuable comments on this report. We would also like to thank Ms. Oanh T. Luc (Behavioral Biology Program, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA) for technical expertise in creating an overview figure (Figure 1) for the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to Drs. Thomas J. Williams (NASA-JSC) and Ajit P. Mulavaria (NASA-JSC) for their valuable insights and discussions on spaceflight stressors, behavior, and cognition.”

 

3

Anderson A, Stankovic A, Cowan D, Fellows A, Buckey J Jr.

Hum Factors. 2022 May 23;187208221100693. Online ahead of print.

PIs: K. Binsted, A. Anderson, J.C. Buckey Jr

Note: From the abstract: “Isolated, confined, extreme (ICE) environments are accompanied by a host of stress-inducing circumstances: operational pressure, interpersonal dynamics, limited communication with friends and family, and environmental hazards. We evaluated the effectiveness of attention-restoration-therapy-based immersive Virtual Reality (VR) in three ICE environments: the Canadian Forces Station-Alert (CFS Alert), the 12-month HI-SEAS IV expedition, and the 8-month HI-SEAS V expedition.”

Journal Impact Factor: 2.888

Funding: “The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute project NBPF0380 through NASA cooperative agreement NCC 9–58, and in part by NASA Grants NNX13AM78G and NNX15AN05G.”

 

4

Weislogel MM, Graf JC, Wollman AP, Turner CC, Cardin KJT, Torres LJ, Goodman JE, Buchli JC.

npj Microgravity. 2022 May 20;8(1):16. Review.

PI: M.M. Weislogel

Note: From the abstract: “In many ways, plumbing is essential to life support. In fact, the advance of humankind on Earth is directly linked to the advance of clean, healthy, reliable plumbing solutions. Shouldn’t this also be true for the advancement of humankind in space? Unfortunately, the reliability of even the simplest plumbing element aboard spacecraft is rarely that of its terrestrial counterpart. This state of affairs is due entirely to the near-weightless ‘low-g’ state of orbiting and coast spacecraft. But the combined passive capillary effects of surface tension, wetting, and system geometry in space can be exploited to replace the passive role of gravity on Earth, and thus achieve similar outcomes there. In this paper, we review a selection of experiments conducted in low-g environments (i.e., ISS and drop towers) that focus on capillary fluidic phenomena.” This article may be obtained online without charge.

Journal Impact Factor: 4.415

Funding: “This work was supported in part through NASA Cooperative Agreements 80NSSC18K0436, NNC05AA29A and NNX12AO47A, NNX09AP66A, NASA SBIR contracts NNX14CJ03C, 80NSSC20C0134, and 80NSSC20C0056, and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) via the German Aerospace Center (DLR) under Grant No. 50WM1145. All drop tower tests were conducted in the 2.1 s Dryden Drop Tower at Portland State University. We are ever grateful for the creative support of the ISS astronaut crews and cadre.”

 

5

Gilbert R, Tanenbaum N, Bhattacharya S.

Heliyon. 2022 May 1;8(5):e09379.

PIs: S. Govind, S. Bhattacharya, R. Gilbert, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship

Note: From the abstract: “While studies have shown an increase in pathogenicity in several microbes during spaceflight and after exposure to simulated microgravity, the mechanisms underlying these changes in phenotype are not understood across different pathogens, particularly in opportunistic pathogens. This study evaluates the mechanism for increased virulence of the opportunistic gram-negative bacterium, Serratia marcescens, in simulated microgravity. Low-shear modeled microgravity (LSMMG) is used in ground-based studies to simulate the effects of microgravity as experienced in spaceflight. Our previous findings showed that there was a significant increase in mortality rates of the Drosophila melanogasterhost when infected with either spaceflight or LSMMG treated S. marcescens. Here, we report that LSMMG increases asparagine uptake and synthesis in S. marcescens and that the increased host lethality induced by LSMMG bacteria grown in rich media can be recapitulated in minimal media by adding only aspartate and glutamine, the substrates of asparagine biosynthesis.” This article may be obtained online without charge.

Journal Impact Factor: 2.85

Funding: “This work was supported by NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division (grant number NNX15AB42G), Ames Research Center Intramural Research Funding, and the International Space Station Research and Development Office (to S.B.), and the NASA Postdoctoral Program (to R.G.).”

 

6

Abbott R, Diaz-Artiles A.

The impact of digital scents on behavioral health in a restorative virtual reality environment.

Acta Astronaut. 2022 May 21. Online ahead of print.

Note: From the abstract: “Astronauts on long-duration missions are at an increased risk of developing adverse behavioral conditions due to prolonged periods in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments. Sleep loss, sensory deprivation and monotony, and loss in social connectedness can further exacerbate their conditions and decrement performance, thus jeopardizing mission success. Future missions will require crews to travel distances that make current countermeasures increasingly difficult, as they rely on proximity to Earth. We have developed a multi-sensory virtual reality (VR) environment as a potential tool to maintain the long-term behavioral health of astronauts.”

Journal Impact Factor: 2.413

Funding: “This work was supported by a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (grant number 80NSSC21K1263).”

 

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Other papers of interest:

 

1

Napoli A, Micheletti D, Pindo M, Larger S, Cestaro A, de Vera J-P, Billi D.

Sci Rep. 2022 May 19;12:8437.

Note: Expose-R2 facility on the ISS results. This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

2

Weber BM, Schätzle S, Stelzer M.

Appl Ergon. 2022 Sep;103:103791.

Note: ISS results.

 

3

Xu P, Chen H, Hu J, Pang X, Jin J, Cai W.

iScience. 2022 May 20;25(5):104331.

Note: China’s SJ-10 satellite results. This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

4

Barabash V, Milz M, Kuhn T, Laufer R.

Acta Astronaut. 2022 Aug;197:46-52. Review.

Note: From the abstract: “The presented Competence Ecosystem for space science and technology has been found to be an effective and sustainable tool for fostering a new generation of competent space workforce who is capable of achieving strategic objectives of the European Union’s new space programme, to address the global challenges, and to promote the New Space agenda.” This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

5

Shirah BH, Ibrahim BM, Aladdin Y, Sen J.

Neurol Sci. 2022 May 18. Review. Online ahead of print.

Note: From the abstract: “Space exploration is crucial for understanding our surroundings and establishing scientific concepts to explore, monitor, and save our planet’s environment. However, the response of the human nervous system in the environment of space poses numerous challenges. Brain complexity explains the vulnerability and intrinsic difficulty of recalibration after disturbance. Over the millennia, the brain has evolved to function at 1-G. Studying the brain and its physiology in different environments may shed light on multiple conditions encountered on Earth that are yet to be solved and dictate collaboration at international levels. The nervous system is affected by several stressors due to microgravity, radiation, isolation, disruption of circadian rhythm, impaired sleep dynamics, and hypercapnia associated with space travel. In this article, we aim to review several aspects related to the nervous system in weightless conditions, as well as the development and future of the emerging field of ‘space neuroscience.'”

 

6

Wang Y, Zhang X, Wang C, Huang W, Xu Q, Liu D, Zhou W, Chen S, Jiang Y.

Nat Commun. 2022 May 19;13:2765.

Note: Head-down tilt bedrest study. From the abstract: “The human visual perceptual system is highly sensitive to biological motion (BM) but less sensitive to its inverted counterpart. This perceptual inversion effect may stem from our selective sensitivity to gravity-constrained life motion signals and confer an adaptive advantage to creatures living on Earth. However, to what extent and how such selective sensitivity is shaped by the Earth’s gravitational field is heretofore unexplored. Taking advantage of a spaceflight experiment and its ground-based analog via 6° head-down tilt bed rest (HDTBR), we show that prolonged microgravity/HDTBR reduces the inversion effect in BM perception.” This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

7

Ponomarev SA, Sadova AA, Rykova MP, Orlova KD, Vlasova DD, Shulgina SM, Antropova EN, Kutko OV, Germanov NS, Galina VS, Shmarov VA.

Sci Rep. 2022 May 19;12:8372.

Note: From the abstract: “During space missions cosmonauts are exposed to a myriad of distinct stressors such as radiation, overloads, weightlessness, radiation, isolation in artificial environmental conditions, which causes changes in the immune system. During spaceflights, it is very difficult to determine the particular factor associated with the observed immunological responses. This makes ground-based experiments examining the effect of each spaceflight associated factor along of particular value. Determining mechanisms causing alterations in cosmonauts’ immunity can lead to potential targets for different countermeasures. In the current article we present the study of the early period of adaptation of human innate immunity of 6 healthy test-subjects, 4 males and 2 females aged 25 through 40, to isolation factors (hypodynamia, psychological stress, artificial environment).” This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

8

Belova SP, Kalashnikova EP, Tyganov SA, Kostrominova TY, Shenkman BS, Nemirovskaya TL.

Arch Biochem Biophys. 2022 Aug 15;725:109291.

Note: Hindlimb unloading study.

 

9

De Moudt S, Hendrickx JO, De Meyer GRY, Martinet W, Fransen P.

Front Physiol. 2022 Apr 28;13:882527.

Note: This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

10

Qin B, Baldoni M, Wu B, Zhou L, Qian Z, Zhu Q.

J Biomech. 2022 Jun;139:111120.

 

11

Abdala R, Mana D, Gonzales Pernas M, Dalto J, Sesta M, Jerkovich F, Zanchetta MB.

J Clin Densitom. 2022 Apr 29;S1094-6950(22)00045-2. Online ahead of print.

 

12

Acta Biomed. 2022 Mar 10;92(S3):e2021582. Review.

Note: This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

13

Rayat Pisheh H, Ansari M, Eslami H.

Tissue Cell. 2022 June;76:101821.

 

14

Riveros-Rivera A, Penzel T, Gunga H-C, Opatz O, Paul F, Klug L, Boschmann M, Mähler A.

Front Physiol. 2022 May 24;13:899636.

Note: This article is part of Research Topic “Neurological, Neurophysiological, Psychological and Psychiatric Effects of High Altitude and Hypoxia” (https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/24670/neurological-neurophysiological-psychological-and-psychiatric-effects-of-high-altitude-and-hypoxia#articles). Additional articles will be forthcoming and may be found in the link to the Research Topic. This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

15

Curr Med Chem. 2022;29(18):3261-99.

 

16

Wang Y, Li Y, Sheng Z, Deng W, Yuan H, Wang S, Liu Y.

Front Oncol. 2022 Apr 29;12:888416. Review.

Note: This article may be obtained online without charge.

 

17

Strauss MB, Covington DB.

Undersea Hyperb Med. 2022 Second-Quarter;49(2):563-8. Review.

 

18

Karthikeyan R, Carrizales J, Johnson C, Mehta RK.

Hum Factors. 2022 May 14;187208221094900. Online ahead of print.