Space travel may accelerate the aging of stem cells by as much as 10 fold, study says
Traveling in space is brutal on the body.
Spatial flights can cause astronauts to lose bones, density, their brains and their eye nerves swell and their genes change the expression. Research suggests that spending time in space is similar to accelerated aging.
NASA’s pioneering study on identical twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly followed the aging signals in the two men while Mark remained on earth and Scott spent 340 days in space.
Certain changes in the body of Scott – such as DNA damage, the reduction in cognitive function and the shortening of telomeres that cap and protect chromosomes – persisted even after six months, according to a “study of Twins” by Landmark 2019 published in the journal Science.
Now, a study published Thursday in the journal Cell Cell describes a new discovery – that stem cells also show signs of aging during the stress of space flight.
In fact, they are aging “ten times more quickly in space than in the field,” said Dr. Catriona Jamieson, director of the Sanford Stem Cell Institute of the University of California in San Diego, the main study of the study.
Stem cells are special cells that can develop in various types of tissues. The aging of stem cells is potentially worrying because it decreases the natural capacity of the body to repair its tissues and organs, potentially leading to chronic age -related conditions such as cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and heart problems.
The new study comes at a time when interest in space flights accelerates. Governments provide long -term missions on the Moon, and private companies are launching consumers and celebrities in space. It is important to understand the health risks involved to make travel in the space safer. And the acceleration of aging in cells could also help researchers better understand how biological processes take place, more slowly, here on earth.
The researchers collected Stem cells of the bone marrow given by people who have undergone hip replacement surgery. The cells were housed in “nanobioreactors”, which are essentially small transparent blood bags, no bigger than an iPhone where biological processes could take place. Nanobioreactors were placed inside a box built to monitor cells called Cubélab.
Each patient sample was divided into two cubelabs, one which was intended for space, while the other remained on earth.
The space -related packages were launched during four commercial mission of replenishment by SpaceX at the International Space Station. In total, the samples spent 32 to 45 days on spacex spaceships, giving cells for more than a month of microgravity or a weightlessness suffered in orbit. The researchers used the cells of cubelab configurations in the field as a comparison.
The Cubelab watched the cells during their trips and its land stays, taking images every day under a microscope. Once the stem cells of space have returned to earth, the researchers compared these samples with their “ground controls” by sequencing their genomes and by performing other tests.
