Weightlessness affects the activity of many genes
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Weightlessness affects the vital activity of almost 200 genes involved in virtually all key intracellular processes.
The influence of space on the human body has been little studied, although there are some successes in this. It is known, for example, that for a month 1-2% of bone tissue is lost - the same as on Earth for a year. But in detail the physiological and biochemical changes occurring in a living organism in flight are almost not studied. On the one hand, it is too expensive to organize space, on the other - not all such studies are ethically conducted on a person. Therefore, an international group of scientists, determined to study the effect of weightlessness on the body, chose as a model object Drosophila, and to create a zero-gravity used a powerful magnetic field.
"Magnetic levitation" is known for a long time: in the late 1990s it was discovered that a powerful magnetic field creates weightlessness and does not harm the animal organism. Moreover, animals in such a field (and it is 350 thousand times larger than terrestrial) behaved as if they were in a near-earth orbit. Since then, this method is used as a cheap and affordable substitute for these flights. During the experiment, the researchers placed developing fruit flies for 22 days in conditions of either reduced or increased gravity, after which they analyzed how the activity of the insect genes changed.
The experimenters report in the BMC Genomics journal that they managed to record changes in the work of 500 genes under conditions of weightlessness (only 10% were common in males and females). True, there is one nuance here, since a colossal magnetic field must also somehow influence the work of genes. To determine how much it distorts the picture, scientists placed flies in a field of the same power, but not causing zero-gravity. After that, it became clear that the weightlessness can be "brought down" the changes in the activity of no more than 200 genes. Among them were the most diverse: both metabolism managers, and those involved in the regulation of immunity, and transmitting cellular signals, etc. In a word, the changes concerned all the key cell processes. At the same time, increased gravity affected the activity of only 44 genes.
Of course, one can not immediately draw conclusions from these data about how weightlessness affects a person. But, according to scientists, and that there is no impact, you will not say. And no matter how scanty it may be, during the stay in orbit (or interplanetary flight) the molecular-genetic effect of weightlessness can reach very tangible values. So let's be ready for this, planning space expeditions.