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the weightless environment of the

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international space station provides

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opportunities for science research that

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just aren't available here on earth and

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the spacex dragon cargo ship launching

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on friday will be bringing new

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experiments to orbit to take advantage

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of that one of them focuses on growing

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protein fibers such as those implicated

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in Alzheimer's disease as a step and

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possibly developing better treatments

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the experiment is called NanoRacks

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self-assembly in biology and the

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original life and the principal

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investigator is dr. Sam Durant's the

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Florida Institute of Technology who flew

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as a payload specialist on a space

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shuttle mission our special missions in

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1990 and 1995 Sam joins us this morning

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to talk about his new orbital research

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thanks so much Sam sure you're welcome

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Brandi well why don't we start by

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talking about what exactly it is about

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the space environment that's so

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important to this new experiment okay

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well when we grow fibers in the

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laboratory they're affected by

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gravitational settling in other words

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they settle our sink towards the bottom

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of the vials that they're growing in

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this affects how the fibers interact

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with each other and they eventually form

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like a tangled web of interlocking

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fibers near the bottom of the file and

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weightlessness this will not deceitful

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not occur so it will change the somewhat

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the way the primers form also fibers

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growth process may be affected by

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natural convection we're not sure and

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that will not be President

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weightlessness either so you say they

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form tangled webs is that the

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self-assembly that the name of the

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investigation refers to now if you look

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at our image of the protein fibers

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you'll see that there are two images

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there on the left is an early stage of

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the fiber from growth process and on the

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right is the a 20 days or so so it's a

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longer

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and the fibers themselves form these

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tangles in the bottom and so I'm not

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sure what was your question about that

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the self-assembly then it's part of the

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name you know the self-assembly is the

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fiber growth process itself no we're

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seriously a protein powder in a solution

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and they spontaneously form these long

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thin fibers which are anywhere from one

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to a few proteins in diameter and can be

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which is a few nanometers in but they

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can be microns long so it's a

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spontaneous growth of these fibers they

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self assemble from the solution of

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proteins into long thin fibers okay and

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I think you develop some new hardware to

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study that specifically what why was

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that necessary yes so the we want to

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study the growth process and the time

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period is around 25 days or so to move

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from proteins in solution to this

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tangled web that we find and we need to

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sample it every few days and we sample

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it and the data we measure it is we use

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an atomic force microscope to image the

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fibers and that's just not present at

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present possible to do on the space

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station so we had to build a device to

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do that and our experiment our picture

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of our experiment you can see there's a

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small automated device that's designed

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to accomplish this day we do that by

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using nine individual vials and each of

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which will incubate this protein

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solution for a different time interval

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that way we can cover the time intervals

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from for 25 days at about three day

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intervals like that so we'll have a

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sample and we don't start the incubation

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in each of the vials until we inject the

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protein powder into the solution their

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health separate until they reach orbit

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and then on each file a small stepper

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motor pushes the powder solution down

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into the powder down into the buffer

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solution and then we raise the

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temperature to 55 degrees c and the

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incubation starts

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and so we do that in a series so that we

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cover intervals and then when we get it

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back in Florida we bring it into the

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laboratory and we can measure each of

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the samples so that we will have this

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time series so is the goal that that

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you'll be able to develop treatments for

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Alzheimer's and similar diseases sure

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that mean that's a long term dream right

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now that what we're trying to do is

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completely understand the process of

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this self-assembly of proteins from

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solution and there are many proteins

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that do that the one we're using is a

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model that is inexpensive and it shows

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all the characteristics of all the other

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proteins that do this and Alzheimer's is

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one there are a couple of proteins that

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are implicated in Alzheimer's disease

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they both form protein fibers and the

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manner similar to what we're studying

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and so once we understand that process

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we might be able to then lead to an

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understanding of the cause of

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Alzheimer's disease and maybe even

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eventually a cure or treatment that

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would certainly be wonderful we got look

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forward to seeing that launched on on

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Friday and hearing more about the

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results in the coming months yeah we're

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of course are very excited and you know

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be delighted to share it with you when

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we get it back and tell you what we've

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learned thank you so much for joining us

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this again with Sam Durant's the

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principal investigator for NanoRacks