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The Apex 3-2 TAGES experiment is a follow on, in a way,
a follow-on experiment
of our earlier TAGES experiment that flew on Apex 1.
The experiment is, uses the same organism,
a Arabidopsis thaliana -
the model of the organism of the plant world.
What we've done with this experiment is we've engineered
them with a number of different green fluorescent reporter genes
that we're going to be following specific expression patterns
using the element microscope, and in addition,
a number of the Arabidopsis lines that we're using
in the Apex 3 experiment are mutants in certain genes
that we found were important the last experiment
that we did in spaceflight.
For instance, in the previous experiment,
we found that a number of the genes that are involved
in cell wall remodeling are the ones
that are engaged in spaceflight.
So one of the things that we wanted to do
with the current experiment is specifically look
at particular mutants in a Arabidopsis
and also different types of reporter genes that allow us
to ask some of the questions that arose
from the answers we got in the last experiment.
As a laboratory, we are plant and molecular biologists,
we're interested in spaceflight, and as a novel environment,
as something that's outside the evolutionary experience
of plants, and what the Apex 2 experiment does,
Apex 3-2 experiment does, is look at a Arabidopsis thaliana
and how it responds both at the molecular genetic level,
as far as what genes are turned on and turned off biochemically,
and also using live imaging with the LMM,
Light Microscopy Module, to look at specific reporter genes.
We've engineered to give us specific locations
for which these genes are happening in real time.
We are using a new piece of hardware that is the LMM,
the Light Microscopy Module, and what that allows us to do,
in our first apex experiment,
what we did is we used the green fluorescent imaging system,
the GIS, that's on orbit in the ABRS unit,
to collect real-time images of the entire petri plate
that our plants are growing upon,
and that gave us fluorescent gene expression data as well
as root growth data and such, which was great!
But what the LMM allows us to do is
to take things a little step further, and we can now look
at individual roots, not only at the macro level,
but at the microscopic level.
And not only just on the surface of those roots,
but we can tunnel in a little bit
by taking different focal planes of the same root
and look deep inside the root tip to see
which cells are expressing some
of the green fluorescent protein genes,
in which we're interested.
And that gives us a whole new dynamic to ask, well,
how are plants responding
and where are those cells changing inside those roots?
And that gives us a much more dynamic range
of gene expression patterns on orbit
than we were able to get before.
The two space centers that we've worked with,
Kennedy Space Center and the Glenn Research Center,
work together because they have two different aspect
of how they facilitate our experiment.
Of course at Kennedy we have the launch.
And what Kennedy also does is supports us in terms
of the infrastructure and doing the ground control experiments,
also doing the, all the pretesting,
what we call the spaceflight, the science verification,
the payload verifications, all that stuff is taken care
of by Kennedy Space Center.
Glenn Research Center comes into the deal
because they have got the very specific type of hardware
that we'd like to utilize on orbit, the LMM.
So the Light Microscopy Module now allows us to take a closer
and deeper look at some of the gene expression patterns
that can be revealed by some of these fluorescent reporter genes
that we've engineered into our experiment.
So GRC handles not only the experiment itself
from the imaging point of view, but it also has been very good
about allowing us access to the people and to the ground unit
for the LMM, both before, to tweak the systems
and also test some of the new parameters
that we'd like to explore.
Part of what I find most exciting
about doing what we would call space biology,
is taking our biology, you know, the stuff that we live
with on a day-to-day basis, our plants, ourselves, anything,
is taking it to an environment that is,
and I've said this before, outside our realm of experience,
outside our evolutionary experience,
and it is fascinating to me
to see how a terrestrial organism functions
in that kind of environment.
And so, for me, that's part of the most exciting bit
from the science end of things, is to see, you know,
how the genes change, how the plants change, you know,
how all of this comes together in adjusting
to something new and something novel.
It's also very exciting to be part of a pioneering group
of going out and exploring new avenues of research,
new environments, new platforms of doing this kind of research,
and fundamentally, myself and humans in general,
we're explorers, and I feel like this is what's next.