Christina Koch performs Genes in Space experiment. Image: Sebastian Kraves
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The experiment was developed by miniPCR bio, a life sciences company based in Massachusetts, along with the aerospace giant Boeing, and was performed on yeast cells by astronauts Christina Koch, Nick Hague, and David Saint-Jacques during their 2019 expedition on the International Space Station.The full results, reported on Wednesday for the first time, revealed that DNA could be cut with gene-editing tools, then observed as it repaired, in a space-based technique that will help prepare future astronauts for the many rigors of long-duration missions into deep space.“This is a culmination point of the team effort that we started back in 2014, when Genes in Space was founded by Boeing and miniPCR bio,” said Sebastian Kraves, who co-founded miniPCR bio and Genes in Space and is the senior author of the new paper, in an email. “Since then, we have been inviting students (in middle school and high school) to submit audacious experiments to study biology in the extreme environment of space,” he continued. “Every year we have been astounded by the creativity and quality of the proposals that have driven several milestones in space biology.”This particular project, known as Genes-in-Space-6, was the brainchild of four Minnesota high school students: Aarthi Vijayakumar, Michelle Sung, Rebecca Li, and David Li, who are co-authors of the new study. The students originally proposed the idea of using CRISPR as an experimental platform to study the mechanisms of DNA repair in microgravity in 2018. Kraves and his colleagues enlisted the help of researchers from NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the MIT Whitehead Institute, among others, to bring the idea into reality.
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