The genetic diversity of the dingo, Australia's largest indigenous carnivore, has been a long-standing research interest of Dr. Alan Wilton.
Bioastronautics: The Influence of Space Travel on Cellular Function
Technological and scientific advancements in astronautics have enabled our ability to explore space. Astronauts are exposed to a series of environmental factors that are different during space flight and the time during entire weightless missions; one of them is the absence of gravity. Future planetary missions and the construction, maintenance and use of space stations will be achieved in weightlessness.
The transition from terrestrial to a space environment is known to have an impact on human physiology and causes adaptive or pathological changes. Hence, understanding the effects of weightlessness/microgravity on human physiology will ensure the development of health and safety practices for astronauts. The maintenance of regulatory autonomic neural functions is vital to life. Specifically, the orchestrated neural pathway activities that occur during space travel can be studied in the laboratory with NASA’s rotary cell culture system, which simulates microgravity.
This study investigates the comparative differential expression of secreted factors (secretome) from olfactory stem cells (OSC) as a means of studying neural pathway communication. OSC secretomes will be profiled and assessed in their influence of cell regeneration under 1G and microgravity. Advanced differential expression proteomic techniques will be used to determine the complex components of the molecular mechanisms involved in micro-environmental cell communication. Subsequently, metabolic labelling will be investigated to quantify the identified factors expressed under microgravity. This study is the first of its kind and is in line with NASA's bioastronautics roadmap.
BABS personnel that are responsible for this project