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one of the experiments that's just

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delivered to the station inside that

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spacex dragon cargo vehicle is

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investigating how cells adapt to

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stresses they encounter from being in

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the low earth orbit weightless

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environment it's called the advanced

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plant experiments 2 or apex 2

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and this morning we're going to learn

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about it from principal investigator dr

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timothy

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hammond of the durham veterans

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veterans affairs medical center and duke

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university school of medicine in durham

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north carolina dr hammond thanks for

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joining us on space station live

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that's great to have you here it's hard

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it's hard enough to figure out why

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entire organisms react as they do

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but tell us why you are focusing on the

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on the cellular level if you will

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we have the privilege of flying yeast

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which actually have about half the same

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genetic makeup as a person

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and our long-term goal is to repurpose

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drugs

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expensive and finding one without side

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effects is difficult

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and in the va we have a commonest

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diagnosis is type 2 diabetes and the

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commonest medicine for that is metformin

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and what we have found is patients that

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take metformin for diabetes are

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protected from certain forms of cancer

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modeling that those cancers is difficult

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on the ground because in the middle of

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the cancer you have very little gas

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exchange

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and it's exactly the same in space you

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have very little convection the gases

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don't move like they do on the ground so

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we think space is a very good way to

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model the inside of a tumor and to look

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for new drugs

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let's see you're you're actually using

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brewers yeast for this experiment i

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understand what what makes that

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appropriate for this type of research

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brewers yeast is great because it's

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simple it's simple to grow

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we know every gene that it has

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and its control systems are very simple

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and it has some special enzymes that

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make it very easy to uh do sophisticated

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molecular biology and knock genes out so

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we actually have a series of genes a

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pool of genes

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of a full of strains in which one gene

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is knocked out of every

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strain

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a different gene and has been replaced

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by a piece of dna that we know its

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sequence

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and when we then grow the yeast under a

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pressure in this case space or space

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with or without a drug and that way we

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can

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count those

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bar codes as we call them what we put in

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and know what gave us survival advantage

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and disadvantage when the

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samples come back

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how

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does the experiment actually operate on

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the station in terms of autonomous crew

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involvement both

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well actually this time what we've done

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is we've put if you've ever seen a

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fluorescent jellyfish that glows green

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right the protein that makes it grow

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green has been isolated and we have its

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dna and we put that in front of every

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gene in the genome as well

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so it's spotted each strain reports on

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the when when a gene is transcribed it

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also transcribes that protein that makes

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a green fluorescence

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so we have plates that have 384

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different strains each one reporting a

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different gene

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and over 10 plates we can get the whole

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genome and there's actually a

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fluorescent plate reader on station we

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put one plate in a time we measure the

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gene expression every 10 minutes for 18

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hours and we get the entire ballet of

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how yeast responds to

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space

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that's just it's amazing how uh how that

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is planned to operate how are you going

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to be able to tell

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basically how the cells respond to the

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stresses uh on the from the orbital

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environment

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well because we have ground controls for

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comparison and our canadian uh

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collaborators who actually do the

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spotting canada has fantastic robotics

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just like they made the canadian arm for

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the international space station they

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have some very very good robotics

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and they just published a paper in

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science last week in which they look at

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3 700 different responses to stresses

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and drugs on the ground so that gives us

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a fantastic reference library so we

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really understand what's unique about

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space and what we can exploit in space

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that we can't do on the ground

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um and of course

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we'll talk about your goals to figure

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out are they to figure out which plants

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grow best in space or how to genetically

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engineer plants so that they can grow

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well in space or might even the findings

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be applied

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to cells of people who will actually be

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in space

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well actually where we're interested in

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helping the astronauts of course but

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we're interested in

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veteran patients in va hospitals and

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americans and american hospitals and in

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international countries

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what we want to do is repurpose drugs

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and we're interested in whether the lack

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of convection in space the lack of gas

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movement gives us a good model for tumor

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agents

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for anti-cancer drugs that are better

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than on the ground so what we will bring

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back is the knowledge which pathways

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attack tumors so that we can use those

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drugs or even design better drugs on the

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ground once we know the pathways

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involved well and you just i think it

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just answered my last question but um

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the unique i guess environment of space

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uh offers you actually that i assume you

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can have direct interaction with the

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crew

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as a principal investigator right

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we do we of course have to go through

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the capcom like everybody else like you

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see on tv

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but yes we can and we try to design an

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experiment that

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is fairly automated so we don't take so

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we have abundant crew time when we need

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it but we try not to overuse that

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privilege

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well we're certainly looking forward to

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hearing all about it even further and

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and we really appreciate you joining us

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today on space station live dr hammond