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Weightlessness affects the activity of many genes
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025

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Weightlessness affects the activity of almost 200 genes involved in virtually all key intracellular processes.
The impact of space on the human body has been little studied, although there have been some successes in this area. It is known, for example, that 1–2% of bone tissue is lost in a month, the same amount as on Earth in a year. But the physiological and biochemical changes that occur in a living organism during flight have been almost never studied in detail. On the one hand, setting up space is too expensive, and on the other, not all such studies are ethical to conduct on humans. Therefore, an international group of scientists, having decided to study the impact of weightlessness on the body, chose the fruit fly as a model object, and used a powerful magnetic field to recreate weightlessness.
"Magnetic levitation" has been known for a long time: in the late 1990s, it was discovered that a powerful magnetic field creates weightlessness without harming the body of animals. Moreover, animals in such a field (which is 350 thousand times stronger than the Earth's) behaved as if they were in near-Earth orbit. Since then, this method has been used as a cheap and accessible substitute for real flights. During the experiment, researchers placed developing fruit flies in conditions of either reduced or increased gravity for 22 days, after which they analyzed how the activity of the insects' genes changed.
The experimenters reported in the journal BMC Genomics that they managed to record changes in the work of 500 genes in zero gravity (with only 10% common to both males and females). However, there is one nuance here, since the colossal magnetic field should also somehow affect the work of genes. To determine how much it distorts the picture, the scientists placed the flies in a field of the same power, but not causing weightlessness. After that, it turned out that weightlessness can be blamed for changes in the activity of no more than 200 genes. Among them were the most diverse: those controlling metabolism, those involved in regulating immunity, those transmitting cellular signals, etc. In short, the changes affected all key cellular processes. At the same time, increased gravity affected the activity of only 44 genes.
Of course, one cannot immediately draw conclusions about how weightlessness affects a person from these data. But, according to scientists, one cannot say that there is no impact either. And no matter how insignificant it may be, during the time spent in orbit (or during an interplanetary flight) the molecular-genetic effect of weightlessness can reach very noticeable values. So let's be prepared for this when planning space expeditions.