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Space travel causes changes to genes
Context
NASA’s Twins Study brought ten research teams together to accomplish one goal: find out what happens to the human body after spending one year in space
Comparing the data
Research includes data on what happened to Scott Kelly, physiologically and psychologically, while he was in space, and compared the data to Mark Kelly, his brother
Significance: A stepping stone towards long missions to Mars
NASA knew as to what happens to the body after the standard-duration six-month missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but astronaut Scott Kelly’s one-year mission is seen as a stepping stone to a three-year mission to Mars
Observations made
- Spaceflight is associated with oxygen deprivation stress, increased inflammation, and dramatic nutrient shifts that affect gene expression
- Scott Kelly’s telomeres — end caps of chromosomes that shorten as one ages — actually became significantly longer in space. This finding was made in 2017
- A new finding is that the majority of those telomeres shortened within two days of Scott’s return to the earth. Researchers now know that 93% of Scott’s genes returned to normal after landing
- However, the remaining 7% points to possible longer term changes in genes related to his immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia and hypercapnia.
