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4 Life Sciences Research on the Lunar Surface
4 Life Sciences Research on the Lunar Surface
Pages 18-23
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From page 18... ...
FOOTPRINTS AND FINGERPRINTS: MICROBIOME AND THE MOON Knight spoke about three aspects of microorganisms and the Moon: keeping the lunar environment protected from microbes brought from Earth, creating habitable environments on the Moon for the growth of microbes, and using microbes to optimize astronaut nutrition and health in the lunar environment. He noted that the work he does has been made possible by the dramatic cost reduction in sequencing genomes, with the amount of sequencing that would have cost $4 million little more than a decade ago now being possible to do for just 75 cents.
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From page 19... ...
The implication is that people today have lost many of the microbes that helped earlier humans maintain their health. The real concern, he said, is that humans living in space or lunar environments could lose even more of the human microbiome, such as microbes that supply essential components for metabolism.
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From page 20... ...
Still, Cockell said, it will be important to also do such studies on the Moon itself because "simulated gravity is not quite the same as real gravity, because you've got Coriolis effect and different types of sheer stresses inside this miniature centrifuge." It will likely never be commercially feasible to get rare earth elements on the Moon and bring them back to Earth, he said. However, mining such elements on the Moon may be important if there is ever a permanent settlement beyond Earth.
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From page 21... ...
Then, to run an experiment modeling lung function, air flows past the lung cells while blood flows past the epithelial cells. In one study, the researchers examined how COVID-19 virus particles in the air attached to the lung tissue and then were attacked by immune cells from the blood flow.
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From page 22... ...
It also held seeds of some common plants -- cotton, brassica, potato, and Arabidopsis -- as well as some fruit fly eggs and yeast cells. The idea was that the plants would produce oxygen for the system, the fruit flies would breathe the oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, and the yeast cells would metabolize some of the waste of the flies.
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From page 23... ...
It will be important to enable the survival of plants and other organisms over the lunar night. Reduced gravity may affect water behavior more than expected.
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