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Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute

Bill Kalinowski and Paul Koenig of BioServe hand over a middeck locker containing worms from Pittsburgh to Flight Crew Equipment for loading onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Two thousand C. elegans worms from the Jacobson Laboratory in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Biological Sciences will be joining one thousand from the Baillie Laboratory in Simon Fraser University's Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a Malyasian Space Agency sponsored experiment that will be carried out during Expeditions 14 and 15. Having launched to ISS from Kazakhstan with Pittsburgh area astronaut Mike Fincke in 2004, C. elegans will this time be hitching a ride with the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery (Space Transportation System Mission 116 (STS-116)). The Pittsburgh worms hope to set a record for the largest number of generations an animal has undergone in space. Such multigenerational studies are a key "proof of concept" for any plans to colonize other planetary bodies.

Despite its microscopic size, many physiological systems are conserved between C. elegans and humans. This conservation has resulted in C. elegans becoming a common genetic model organism for studies of human health, and researchers utilizing the worm have received Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine in 2002 and 2006. Recent work by University of Pittsburgh Researcher Nate Szewczyk and collaborators from NASA and JAXA (Japanese Space Agency) has revealed that in response to spaceflight, worm muscles undergo a number of molecular changes identical to those observed in astronauts. Work on the current mission is aimed to determine if these changes affect worm behavior in space and if muscle continues to deteriorate over a number of generations. Hardware developed by BioServe Space Technologies Center, headquartered at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Aerospace Engineering Department, will capture photo and video data during the worms' extended stay. These data will be analyzed by K-12 students participating through the web based educational group Orion's Quest. Upon return to Earth, samples preserved on orbit and live worms will be analyzed by a number of participating labs around the world.

 
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