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the dragon cargo ship which arrived at

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the station late last month

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carried opals and another large payload

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in its unpressurized section its trunk

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it also carried

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many many other science payloads inside

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the freight carrier a number of new

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experiments that have come to space

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designed to take advantage of the low

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earth orbit environment

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one of these new experiments is called

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biotube micro and it's focused on how

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plants sense and respond to gravity the

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principal investigator dr carl

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hasenstein joins us this morning from

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his office at the university of

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louisiana at lafayette dr hastenstein

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people have been looking at how plants

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do in space for a long time

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generally how do they do

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well

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especially once they get exposed to the

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proper environment initially we did not

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know

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what it means to grow

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plants in the absence of gravity but it

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turns out it wasn't gravity that was the

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corporate in not succeeding

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with plant growth it was the lack of

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convection and as a result the

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distribution of gases and so forth that

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prevented proper development but we have

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come a long way and learned how to do it

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in the meantime so we can grow

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plants quite well

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the gravity is still a factor right what

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what caused you to to be focused on that

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aspect

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well

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it's a conundrum for more than a hundred

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years to find out why every tree

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grows upright and

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anchors itself in the soil

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and this basic question as to how

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tiny cells that don't have specialized

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features such as we have in our

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vestibular apparatus are able to sense

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and respond to gravity is just puzzling

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and one of the aspects of

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detecting how these things work

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ideally requires to

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remove gravity as a factor and this way

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we can

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gradually test how individual components

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of this system that makes plants sense

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respond to gravity and that's what this

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experiment is about okay uh take us

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through your plan then what are you

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going to be what have you sent to space

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and what are you going to be doing in

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that hardware on orbit

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well

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the biotube micro is an external

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shell that contains the actual

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experiment

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and

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the actual experiment consists of

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so-called

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magnetic

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chambers

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series of exactly 10

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magnets that are aligned so that they

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generate a very strong

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magnetic field

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inside this field we distort this

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uniform magnetic field by

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you could call it

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magnetic lenses there in reality

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ferromagnetic wedges

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and what does that have to do with how

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plants respond to gravity these magnetic

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gradients that result by inserting these

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wedges into the uniform magnetic field

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exert what we call a magnetophoretic

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force

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is specific

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for diamagnetic compounds such as the

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middle class that are the suspected

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gravity sensors it sounds like you're

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you're manipulating the gravity pull

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on on on these parts of the plant

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that's correct but we don't exert a pull

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we exert a push

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these high graded magnetic fields repel

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the starch

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filled the miloplasts

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and by doing so

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they

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produce the same effect that we see

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under the influence of gravity

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without having any other

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cellular component exposed to gravity so

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we can pinpoint whether the milloplast

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is actually

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doing

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the the initiation

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of the sensing and

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responds to gravity by virtue of

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moving them around in their respective

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cells we call them static sites very

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interesting do the do the crew members

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participate in this in some way

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not really they were

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helpful in

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stowing the the hardware into the

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express rack on iss but the actual

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experiment is

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entirely controlled from ksc

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okay now i assume then that

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you've flown this on dragon you're going

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to get these samples back what do you do

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with them when you get them

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well we we will

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analyze

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different things

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one is the distribution of these

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amyloplasts

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after we have seen downlink video to

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indicate whether we obser observe

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actually curvature in the roots so we

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have a video equipment

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that takes

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pictures in the infrared region of this

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um

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come back

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we will call we will correlate the

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distribution of

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the middle class within these status

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sides to the observed curvature and we

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will also

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do a series of genetic tests to see if

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gene expression has changed

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in the

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growth conditions that we had in space

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at the same time we do so called

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immunocytolocalization of relevant

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proteins that are responsible for the

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growth response of

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cells and or roots in general so there's

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still plenty of study to be done once

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you get the samples back

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yes indeed now i found it very

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interesting that i saw that you ran this

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experience experiment on the last flight

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of columbia and we're still able to get

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some results back from downlinked images

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right yeah that's correct um it it was

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unfortunate that we could not get our

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biological material back

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but the downlink suggested strongly that

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we had curvature as we had expected but

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we were not able to confirm this because

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we never received the actual

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plant material is your goal to simply

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improve the way plants grow in space or

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does this have applicability on earth

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well

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any time you have

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better or deeper understanding as to how

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plants

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perform and respond to

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environmental cues or problems

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you are bound to

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benefit processes on earth as well

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so

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while we clearly want to

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establish a means of directionally

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controlling plant growth in space we

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also

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want to use that gained knowledge for

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improvement of plants on on earth

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dr hazenstein thank you for taking a few

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minutes for us this morning and good

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luck with the experiment thank you so