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9 Publications visible to you, out of a total of 9

Abstract (Expand)

Background: Space travel–associated stressors such as microgravity or radiation exposure have been reported in astronauts after short‐ and long‐duration missions aboard the International Space Station. Despite risk mitigation strategies, adverse health effects remain a concern. Thus, there is a need to develop new diagnostic tools to facilitate early detection of physiological stress. Methods and Results: We measured the levels of circulating cell‐free mitochondrial DNA in blood plasma of 14 astronauts 10 days before launch, the day of landing, and 3 days after return. Our results revealed a significant increase of cell‐free mitochondrial DNA in the plasma on the day of landing and 3 days after return with vast ~2 to 355‐fold interastronaut variability. In addition, gene expression analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells revealed a significant increase in markers of inflammation, oxidative stress, and DNA damage. Conclusions: Our study suggests that cell‐free mitochondrial DNA abundance might be a biomarker of stress or immune response related to microgravity, radiation, and other environmental factors during space flight.

Authors: Malik Bisserier, Santhanam Shanmughapriya, Amit Kumar Rai, Carolina Gonzalez, Agnieszka Brojakowska, Venkata Naga Srikanth Garikipati, Muniswamy Madesh, Paul J. Mills, Kenneth Walsh, Arsen Arakelyan, Raj Kishore, Lahouaria Hadri, David A. Goukassian

Date Published: 2nd Nov 2021

Publication Type: Journal

Abstract (Expand)

Compared to low doses of gamma irradiation (γ-IR), high-charge-and-energy (HZE) particle IR may have different biological response thresholds in cardiac tissue at lower doses, and these effects may be IR type and dose dependent. Three- to four-month-old female CB6F1/Hsd mice were exposed once to one of four different doses of the following types of radiation: γ-IR 137Cs (40-160 cGy, 0.662 MeV), 14Si-IR (4-32 cGy, 260 MeV/n), or 22Ti-IR (3-26 cGy, 1 GeV/n). At 16 months post-exposure, animals were sacrificed and hearts were harvested and archived as part of the NASA Space Radiation Tissue Sharing Forum. These heart tissue samples were used in our study for RNA isolation and microarray hybridization. Functional annotation of twofold up/down differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and bioinformatics analyses revealed the following: (i) there were no clear lower IR thresholds for HZE- or γ-IR; (ii) there were 12 common DEGs across all 3 IR types; (iii) these 12 overlapping genes predicted various degrees of cardiovascular, pulmonary, and metabolic diseases, cancer, and aging; and (iv) these 12 genes revealed an exclusive non-linear DEG pattern in 14Si- and 22Ti-IR-exposed hearts, whereas two-thirds of γ-IR-exposed hearts revealed a linear pattern of DEGs. Thus, our study may provide experimental evidence of excess relative risk (ERR) quantification of low/very low doses of full-body space-type IR-associated degenerative disease development.

Authors: Venkata Naga Srikanth Garikipati, Arsen Arakelyan, Eleanor A. Blakely, Polly Y. Chang, May M. Truongcao, Maria Cimini, Vandana Malaredy, Anamika Bajpai, Sankar Addya, Malik Bisserier, Agnieszka Brojakowska, Abrisham Eskandari, Mary K. Khlgatian, Lahouaria Hadri, Kenneth M. Fish, Raj Kishore, David. A. Goukassian

Date Published: 13th Feb 2021

Publication Type: Journal

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