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here at the kennedy space center they

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continue to process the payloads for the

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spacex 4 launch and today we're going to

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talk about one of those payloads it's

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called micro 8 and it's studying yeast

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in space joining me now is sheila

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nielsen she is the principal

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investigator for the micro eight uh

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project and also fatigue

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and he is from the ames research center

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you're the project scientist thank you

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you both for joining us today first of

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all tell us about micro eight thanks

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lori microwave is our opportunity to

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evaluate how yeast

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or cells in general respond to the

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microgravity environment in our case

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we're working with the east canada

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albicans which is an opportunistic

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pathogen it causes the superficial and

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usually easily treatable infections like

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thrush and fungal nails but it can be a

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much more of a concern for some

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individuals so microwave is an extension

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of micro-6

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that we launched two years ago when we

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took what what we learned from that

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experiment and are generating

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additional experiments to sort of take

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that research one step farther on

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microwave why do we study this does it

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benefit us here on earth does it benefit

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future space flight why do we study it

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right well i actually think of the

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experiment sort of as a three-fold

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process

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the first and and most basic

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scientifically is to understand how ye

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how cells in general respond to extreme

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environments

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which microgravity certainly is an

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extreme environment and that just gives

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us some some general information on cell

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behavior and cell function the next

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level is to understand how potential

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pathogens could affect flight crew

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especially as we look forward to longer

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terms in space

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and then the third piece as you

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mentioned was what does this tell us

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about the organisms

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on earth and because this yeast is a

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potential pathogen and does cause

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disease in immunocompromised people

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people who've had surgeries or have

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diseases that compromise their immune

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response

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it can teach us a lot about

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how those organisms function within

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parts of the body that we can't easily

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access and then

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allow us to

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understand the disease process and

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develop therapies potentially to to

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improve outcomes of that and so fatigue

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the um ames research center is

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responsible for these micro payloads

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what what is the interest there with

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with ames and why do why do you guys

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want to be involved with this and how

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does it work with bioserve and sheila's

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from montana state university tell us

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how that all works yes so the

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space biology projects at nasa ames

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research center manage all the macro

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payloads

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and so those are investigations that

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more or less follow the recommendation

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from the national research councils

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in 2011 they pub publish

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a decadal survey which more or less is

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being used by nasa as to what type of

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research needs to be conducted on the

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international space station per se and

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so at ames we more or less overseeing

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the projects and as you mentioned

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biosafe space technology at the

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university of colorado in boulder is the

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pedal developer

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all right and sheila you talked about

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we've learned a little bit so far tell

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us what we've learned

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okay we we flew on spacex one which was

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our first opportunity as well as space

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expeditions

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and that gave us a lot of groundwork we

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we found that the organisms were

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a little bit more resistant to

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antimicrobials as we had found in our

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ground-based studies

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we found we were able to compare their

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growth rates to those experiments that

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we were doing

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comparably on ground we also found out

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that we could bring live samples back

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and test them

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at our home lab that those samples that

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had been exposed to flight

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and so there was a lot of the basic

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information that we were able to to

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garner from that first flight and so on

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this one we're adding a second

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antimicrobial and a couple of new

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analyses sort of as an extension of

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those initial studies you've been here a

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few days now tell us about the work

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you're doing right now to get this

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payload ready okay the first part of our

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team arrived in the middle of last week

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the second half of the team arrived on

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friday and basically we set up the lab

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that was in very good shape for us

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already we had a lot of equipment that

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we brought from home

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basically got all of the equipment

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sterilized media made and then on

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saturday what happens here is we

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actually build the experiments within

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the hardware provided by a bioserve and

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it's at least a two-step if not a

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three-step process and on saturday we

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started building those experiments and

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the next two stages of that building

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process will be much more closely

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juxtaposed to launch

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so we'll spend 30 plus maybe days in

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space then come back right right so this

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experiment will be it has a couple of

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growth windows while on the

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international space station but the

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experiment will stay there for the

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duration of space x4 and return on space

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x4 more micros fati

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yes hopefully uh i mean we expecting

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micro 9 to come up on spacex

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so we'll be

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actually also using the same model

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organism which is east but it will be

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different type of objectives and

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scientific i guess investigation

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all right well it sounds like

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interesting work interesting

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investigations we can't wait to learn