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much of the science research on the

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international space station is devoted

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to learning more about how the human

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body deals with being in the weightless

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environment for a long period of time

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which will be the case during future

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missions to explore deep space

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one way to determine how people respond

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to changes in their environment is to

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sequence their dna and rna

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and now there is a portable tool

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designed for that task that is being

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tested on orbit it's called the

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biomolecule sequencer and this morning

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we're going to learn about that from the

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principal investigator dr aaron burton

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of the nasa johnson space center

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good morning welcome and thank you for

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joining us here at the international

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space station flight control room dr

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aaron burton thank you for joining us

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uh thanks for having me uh it's a

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pleasure to be here wait well let's

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first talk about the um

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the sequence in research can you explain

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to me just briefly how

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how did you get interested in in doing

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this research yeah well in uh graduate

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school i worked with functional rna

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molecules uh and we would look at the

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effects of mutations and how that

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changed the function

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uh of the molecule and so we did a lot

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of sequencing um

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from that perspective

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and so this

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project is kind of uh building on that

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research where we're looking at changes

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in dna and rna and how they might affect

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um humans and biology in general well

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it's really interesting so um

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what's also fascinating is from what i

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understand this is the first time we've

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actually been able to do this in space

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correct yes and so can you just kind of

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run me through what is

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how is this research about going to be

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valuable to us sequencing dna and rna in

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space okay um so i like to think of dna

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as sort of like a cookbook and then the

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rna would be the

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recipes in that cookbook um right sorry

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jeans will be uh recipes in that

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cookbook and then um if you want to keep

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your cookbook nice and clean you would

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make like a photocopy of each recipe

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and then if you wanted five people to be

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able to make your cheesecake you would

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give five people those cheesecake

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recipes

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and so that's kind of

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how rna works where rna is the

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functional

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or the

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molecules

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that go on to become proteins

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and so

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how an organism is responding to

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microgravity or another environment you

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can tell from its rna so certain rnas

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will be

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increased in production and other rnas

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will be decreased and by looking at the

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changes in the levels of rna

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as a

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as the organism is responding to that

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environment you could tell oh we want

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this pathway upregulated we want this

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pathway down regulated

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and then by looking at dna sequencing

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you can look for permanent changes so

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this would be like mutations

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or things that are going to change the

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cell permanently okay and so what about

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well i guess you know characterizing

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organisms that are in their environment

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and so in space but how is this going to

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help benefit for

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deep space exploration

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so one of the the limitations we have

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for

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exploration now is that we return the

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samples to earth and that's perfectly

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fine for iss because it's pretty close

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but as we move and you want to send

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humans to mars for example it's a nine

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month journey

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roughly and so you're not going to be

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able to return samples every month

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to do that sort of thing so we'd like to

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have the ability to do these processes

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in flight

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during the course of sequencing sure

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exploration

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so i understand you brought some

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show-and-tell here this is actually the

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the device that we have now in space

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correct um so it's going to launch next

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spring okay um so we're working on

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getting it flight certified okay um yeah

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so this is um the dna sequencer and it's

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commercially available yeah so can you

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tell me run through what is the process

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of getting it certified for space and

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what will the astronauts do with it okay

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so basically uh this is the sequencer

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and then this is a flow cell and this is

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kind of where the magic happens

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so

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basically to get it certified for

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flight the most important thing so that

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we want to make sure that it's not going

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to hurt the crew

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or the

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iss itself

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and then

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we'd also like to make sure that it's

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going to work and we don't you know we

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can't really test how well it's going to

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work in microgravity because the iss is

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the only place where you can

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get sustained microgravity for you know

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the hours that a sequencer would run

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and so then

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once we actually get it in flight

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there's on the flow cell here

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we're going to send up uh samples that

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we've prepared on the ground and the

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crew is going to thaw them out and

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basically inject them into a little

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sample port close it and then they push

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go and then the molecules flow down into

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this there's a little chip here that has

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nanopores

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and as the dna or rna passes through the

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nanopore you get a change in current

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that's diagnostic of the sequence and so

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you can from those changes and current

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get back what the sequence

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of the dna was

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and so for the first flight it's just a

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tech demonstration basically does do all

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the fluidics work uh is it can the crew

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members load the sample with space

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um

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that sort of thing what what challenges

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are there how well does the device

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perform

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and then in the future we'd like to

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build where we're actually doing the

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sample prep

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yeah because we haven't done this before

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so we need to make sure we know that

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it's it's actually working properly in

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microgravity if there would be any

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changes or anything like that to that

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device um and so what what do the

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astronauts do they will be loading the

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samples into the device as well yeah

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when they're in space when they're doing

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this okay and i understand you're also

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performing some testing here on earth

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can you tell me about

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yeah so we're

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basically to try and eliminate as many

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variables as we can we're going to

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prepare um identical samples that they

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have in flight we'll have them on the

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ground

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and as close as we can to when the

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astronaut

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is actually doing the experiment we're

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going to try to sequence the same sample

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on earth so that we'll know

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basically how well the sample is

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performing

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so that basically hopefully the only

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variable will be the actual microgravity

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environment

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rather than you know well if it's a

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different sample or

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some process is different it's sat

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around for a longer period of time

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great well thank you so much for coming

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out today and talking about this when

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does this launch

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again set in

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spring spring time of next year okay so

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we look forward to uh

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hearing all about that and good luck on