NASA starts initiative to study effects of spaceflight.
NASA is launching an open-ended research programme to investigate how human and other tissue reacts to time spent in space. The geneLAB project will begin seeking grant applications by autumn 2014, says D. Marshall Porterfield, director of space life and physical sciences research at NASA in Washington DC. It will award 'innovation exploration' grants of US$100,000 for one year; full grants will be for up to 5 years and worth a maximum of $500,000. The agency wants to send organisms including fruitflies and roundworms to the International Space Station to learn how spaceflight affects living tissue at the biomolecular and genetic level. Future grant recipients would also study bone loss and examine tissue from crew members to look for changes to their DNA that occurred while in space and after returning to Earth.
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Biology in space. Nature 501, 271 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7466-271a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7466-271a