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so the international space station of

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course is a multi-disciplinary

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laboratory a number of different

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scientific experiments going on at any

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one time and in the field of cell

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biology researchers are looking for

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something called gene expression

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information it's going to unlock a lot

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of opportunities for them and there's a

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new piece of hardware being tested right

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now on board the station that's going to

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give it to them today i'm joined by dr

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macarani para from the ames research

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center she's one of the project

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scientists for wet lab 2 and first off

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thank you so much for joining me and if

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you could start us off what exactly is

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gene expression and you know why is this

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how or how do we typically collect this

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on board the international space station

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so i think everybody knows that like

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your genetic information tells you the

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color of your eyes and the color of your

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hair but what also is encoded in your

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genetic information is for example how

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you react to your environment and one

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good way to a couple of examples i'm

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going to use is if we're sick we have uh

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systems that help us fight the disease

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or if we're stressed we have systems

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that help us fight

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those distress so uh what what genetic

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what gene expression is is

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if you're healthy you obviously don't

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want to be fighting a disease you don't

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have and so you need to know when to

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turn on that machinery and when not to

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turn on that machinery and that's what

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gene expression is and so scientists

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learn a lot about it about how any

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organism is reacting to its environment

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by understanding which genes are being

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expressed which machineries are turned

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on and which genes are not being

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expressed and one of the ways scientists

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do this is by a technique called

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quantitative pcr and what it does is it

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actually allows the scientists to

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understand how much a specific

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piece of the machinery the proteins how

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much of it is being made how how much

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they're turned on and how much to turn

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off so that's what we refer to when we

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refer to gene expression

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and up until now a lot of this has had

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to be collected by samples that are

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returned back down to earth first so why

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is that not ideal why are we looking to

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get this information right there on

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board the station

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so uh there's a number of reasons why

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that's not ideal and probably the most

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the one that affects absolutely

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everybody is time which means that you

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need to wait

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sometimes weeks sometimes months to get

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your your samples down and be able to

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get the information and then if you wish

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you had done something a little

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differently you need to you need to

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essentially wait until you can get to

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fly the experiment again um so that's

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that's one that affects everybody but

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then there's also

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in order to understand gene expression

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you deal with something called

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ribonucleic acid or rna and it's very

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unstable and so

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no matter how much you try to preserve

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it there's always a possibility that it

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could be

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essentially breaking down over time and

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without without knowing how well you've

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done a job preserving without having a

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control of how it looks like on orbit

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it's hard to tell whether or not uh

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you've done a good job of preserving it

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and how much you can trust your results

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on the ground

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so those are two pretty large reasons as

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to why

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doing the analysis on orbit is preferred

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and so i imagine that's where the wetlab

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rna smart cycle is going to come in how

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is it going to do its job on board the

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station how are the crew members going

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to be interacting with it there on board

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the station

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so the idea of the wetland 2 system is

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to allow a crew member to sample from

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whatever the researcher is studying

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let's just say it's a bacteria and then

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to be able to take that sample and put

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it into our system and our system

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actually extracts the ribonucleic acid

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that i spoke about earlier and allows

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you to allows the crew member really to

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add that that purified ribonucleic acid

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to tubes which then do the analysis the

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qpcr analysis that i explained earlier

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so that the results are now essentially

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just an excel file that can be given to

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the to the researcher when when the

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analysis is complete

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so i mean we're essentially transferring

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a lot of this analysis work from the

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ground and then just doing it right

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there on site onboard the international

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space station

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that's pretty cool

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yeah that's the idea yeah and so clearly

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a very exciting new piece of technology

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what is this going to unlock in the

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future for cell biologists looking to do

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their research on board the

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international space station

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so so again there's a number of benefits

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that that can come of this and one of

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them is the the first uh first problem i

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told you about which is time and

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now researchers will get their

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information a lot earlier than they

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could have possibly done so before but

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also it allows us to start actually

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using the international space station as

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a lab rather than as what we like to

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call an exposure facility where you used

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to have to package your organism up it

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goes it gets exposed to microgravity

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down it comes and now you find out how

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it did and instead of doing that we're

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now not only exposing it but we're also

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getting the information and if a

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researcher was to plan to do say two or

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three subsequent runs of an experiment

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they would have the information from the

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first run and then they could change

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parameters for their second and third

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run so that they can actually

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do the equivalent of what now has to be

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three to separate flights but all in one

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flight which is financially better time

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wise better and really

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an advanced for research in general

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all right well again dr macarena power

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from the amus research center talking to

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us about the wet lab rna smart cycler

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coming to a space station near you

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looking to get that gene expression

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information to scientists we're really

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excited to see what this is going to

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unlock in the future thank you so much

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for joining me today we really