Adenle A A, Johnsen B, Szewczyk N J
University of Nottingham, School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health, Derby, DE22 3DT, United Kingdom.
Adv Space Res. 2009 Jul 15;44(2):210-216. doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2009.04.008.
In an effort to speed the rate of discovery in space biology and medicine NASA introduced the now defunct model specimen program. Four nations applied this approach with C. elegans in the ICE-FIRST experiment. Here we review the standardized culturing as well as the investigation of muscle adaptation, space biology radiation, and gene expression in response to spaceflight. Muscle studies demonstrated that decreased expression of myogenic transcription factors underlie the decreased expression of myosin seen in flight, a response that would appear to be evolutionarily conserved. Radiation studies demonstrated that radiation damaged cells should be able to be removed via apoptosis in flight, and that C. elegans can be employed as a biological accumulating dosimeter. Lastly, ICE-FIRST gave us our first glimpse at the genomic response to spaceflight, suggesting that altered Insulin and/or TGF-beta signaling in-flight may underlie many of the biological changes seen in response to spaceflight. The fact that the results obtained with C. elegans appear to have strong similarities in human beings suggests that not only will C. elegans prove an invaluable model for understanding the fundamental biological changes seen during spaceflight but that it may also be invaluable for understanding those changes associated with human health concerns in space.
为了加快太空生物学和医学领域的发现速度，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）推出了现已停用的模式标本计划。四个国家在ICE-FIRST实验中对秀丽隐杆线虫应用了这种方法。在此，我们回顾了标准化培养以及对肌肉适应性、太空生物学辐射和基因表达对太空飞行反应的研究。肌肉研究表明，飞行中肌球蛋白表达下降的基础是成肌转录因子表达降低，这种反应似乎在进化上是保守的。辐射研究表明，飞行中辐射损伤的细胞应能够通过凋亡被清除，并且秀丽隐杆线虫可作为生物累积剂量计。最后，ICE-FIRST让我们首次了解了对太空飞行的基因组反应，表明飞行中胰岛素和/或转化生长因子-β信号的改变可能是对太空飞行所观察到的许多生物学变化的基础。秀丽隐杆线虫的研究结果在人类中似乎有很强的相似性，这一事实表明，秀丽隐杆线虫不仅将被证明是理解太空飞行期间基本生物学变化的宝贵模型，而且对于理解与太空人类健康问题相关的变化也可能具有重要价值。
