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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2008

Survivability of Psychrobacter cryohalolentis K5 Under Simulated Martian Surface Conditions

Spacecraft launched to Mars can retain viable terrestrial microorganisms on board that may survive the interplanetary transit. Such biota might compromise the search for life beyond Earth if capable of propagating on Mars. The current study explored the survivability of Psychrobacter cryohalolentis K5, a psychrotolerant microorganism obtained from a Siberian permafrost cryopeg, under simulated martian surface conditions of high ultraviolet irradiation, high desiccation, low temperature, and low atmospheric pressure. First, a desiccation experiment compared the survival of P. cryohalolentis cells embedded, or not embedded, within a medium/salt matrix (MSM) maintained at 25 degrees C for 24 hr within a laminar flow hood. Results indicate that the presence of the MSM enhanced survival of the bacterial cells by 1 to 3 orders of magnitude. Second, tests were conducted in a Mars Simulation Chamber to determine the UV tolerance of the microorganism. No viable vegetative cells of P. cryohalolentis were detected after 8 hr of exposure to Mars-normal conditions of 4.55 W/m(2) UVC irradiation (200-280 nm), -12.5 degrees C, 7.1 mbar, and a Mars gas mix composed of CO2 (95.3%), N2 (2.7%), Ar (1.6%), O2 (0.2%), and H(2)O (0.03%). Third, an experiment was conducted within the Mars chamber in which total atmospheric opacities were simulated at tau = 0.1 (dust-free CO2 atmosphere at 7.1 mbar), 0.5 (normal clear sky with 0.4 = dust opacity and 0.1 = CO2-only opacity), and 3.5 (global dust storm) to determine the survivability of P. cryohalolentis to partially shielded UVC radiation. The survivability of the bacterium increased with the level of UVC attenuation, though population levels still declined several orders of magnitude compared to UVC-absent controls over an 8 hr exposure period.

Smith, David J.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Towards a General Equation for the Survival of Microbes Transferred between Solar System Bodies

It should be possible to construct a general equation describing the survival of microbes transferred between Solar System bodies. Such an equation will be useful for constraining the likelihood of transfer of viable organisms between bodies throughout the lifetime of the Solar System, and for refining Planetary Protection constraints placed on future missions. We will discuss the construction of such an equation, present a plan for definition of pertinent factors, and will describe what research will be necessary to quantify those factors. Description: We will examine the case of microbes transferred between Solar System bodies as residents in meteorite material ejected from one body (the "intial body") and deposited on another (the "target body"). Any microbes transferred in this fashion will experience four distinct phases between their initial state on the initial body, up to the point where they colonize the target body. Each of these phases features phenomena capable of reducing or exterminating the initial microbial population. They are: 1) Ejection: Material is ejected from the initial body, imparting shock followed by rapid desiccation and cooling. 2) Transport: Material travels through interplanetary space to the target body, exposing a hypothetical microbial population to extended desiccation, irradiation, and temperature extremes. 3) Infall: Material is deposited on the target body, diminishing the microbial population through shock, mass loss, and heating. 4) Adaptation: Any microbes which survive the previous three phases must then adapt to new chemophysical conditions of the target body. Differences in habitability between the initial and target bodies dominate this phase. A suitable general-form equation can be assembled from the above factors by defining the initial number of microbes in an ejected mass and applying multiplicitive factors based on the physical phenomena inherent to each phase. It should be possible to present the resulting equation in terms of initial ejection mass, ejection shock magnitude, transfer time, initial microbial load and/or other terms and generate graphs defining the number of surviving microbes. The general form of the equation is: x(sub f) = x(sub i) f(sub1) f(sub 2) f(sub 3) f(sub 4) Where x(sub f) is the final number of microbes to survive transfer, x(sub i) is the initial population prior to ejection, and f(sub 1-4) are mortality factors for the four phases described above. Among other considerations, f(sub 1) will vary with respect to impact shock magnitude and f(sub 2) will be time-dependent. Considerable research has been performed to date to quantify the survival rates of various microbes in response to portions of these four phases, both as vegetative cells and/or spores. Results indicate that many species tend to respond differently to the pertinent mortality factors, especially in the case of extremophiles. Therefore, a complete equation will include species-specific responses to the mortality factors.

Fries, M.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Ground Testing of the EMCS Seed Cassette for Biocompatibility with the Tardigrade, Hypsibius dujardini

The European Modular Cultivation System, EMCS, was developed by ESA for plant experiments. We performed ground testing to determine whether ARC EMCS seed cassettes could be adapted for use with tardigrades for future spaceflight experiments. Tardigrades (water bears) are small invertebrates that enter the tun state in response to desiccation or other environmental stresses. Tardigrade tuns have suspended metabolism and have been shown to be survive exposure to space vacuum, high pressure, temperature and other stresses. For spaceflight experiments using the EMCS, the organisms ideally must be able to survive desiccation and storage in the cassette at ambient temperature for several weeks prior to the initiation of the experiment by the infusion of water to the cassette during spaceflight. The ability of tardigrades to survive extremes by entering the tun state make them ideal candidates for growth experiments in the EMCS cassettes. The growth substratum in the cassettes is a gridded polyether sulfone (PES) membrane. A blotter beneath the PES membrane contains dried growth medium. The goals of our study were to (1) determine whether tardigrades survive and reproduce on PES membranes, (2) develop a consistent method for dehydration of the tardigrades with high recovery rates upon rehydration, (3) to determine an appropriate food source for the tardigrades that can also be dehydrated/rehydrated and (4) successful mock rehydration experiment in cassettes with appropriate food source. We present results that show successful multigenerational growth of tardigrades on PES membranes with a variety of wet food sources. We have successfully performed a mock rehydration with tardigrades and at least one candidate food, protonema of the moss Polytrichum, that supports multigenerational growth and whose spores germinate quickly enough to match tardigrade feeding patterns post rehydration. Our results indicate that experiments on the ISS using the tardigrade, Hypsibius dujardini and other similar species could successfully be performed in the flight verified hardware of the EMCS seed cassettes.

EMCS s↗
NASA NTRS2011

Assessment of Gamma Radiation Resistance of Spores Isolated from the Spacecraft Assembly Facility During MSL Assembly

Spore forming bacteria, a common inhabitant of spacecraft assembly facilities, are known to tolerate extreme environmental conditions such as radiation, desiccation, and high temperatures. Since the Viking era (early 1970's), spores have been utilized to assess the degree and level of microbiological contamination on spacecraft and their associated spacecraft assembly facilities. There is a growing concern that desiccation and extreme radiation resistant spore forming microorganisms associated with spacecraft surfaces can withstand space environmental conditions and subsequently proliferate on another solar body. Such forward contamination would certainly jeopardize future life detection or sample return technologies. It is important to recognize that different classes of organisms are critical while calculating the probability of contamination, and methods must be devised to estimate their abundances. Microorganisms can be categorized based on radiation sensitivity as Type A, B, C, and D. Type C represents spores resistant to radiation (10% or greater survival above 0.8 mRad gamma radiation). To address these questions we have purified 96 spore formers, isolated during planetary protection efforts of Mars Science Laboratory assembly for gamma radiation resistance. The spores purified and stored will be used to generate data that can be used further to model and predict the probability of forward contamination.

extreme environments↗
NASA NTRS2011

Assessment of Gamma Radiation Resistance of Spores Isolated from the Spacecraft Assembly Facility During MSL Assembly

Spore forming bacteria, a common inhabitant of spacecraft assembly facilities, are known to tolerate extreme environmental conditions such as radiation, desiccation, and high temperatures. Since the Viking era (early 1970's), spores have been utilized to assess the degree and level of microbiological contamination on spacecraft and their associated spacecraft assembly facilities. There is a growing concern that desiccation and extreme radiation resistant spore forming microorganisms associated with spacecraft surfaces can withstand space environmental conditions and subsequently proliferate on another solar body. Such forward contamination would certainly jeopardize future life detection or sample return technologies. It is important to recognize that different classes of organisms are critical while calculating the probability of contamination, and methods must be devised to estimate their abundances. Microorganisms can be categorized based on radiation sensitivity as Type A, B, C, and D. Type C represents spores resistant to radiation (10% or greater survival above 0.8 Mrad gamma radiation). To address these questions we have purified 96 spore formers, isolated during planetary protection efforts of Mars Science Laboratory assembly for gamma radiation resistance. The spores purified and stored will be used to generate data that can be used further to model and predict the probability of forward contamination.

spacecraft assembly↗
NASA NTRS2016

BioSentinel: Biosensors for Deep-Space Radiation Study

The BioSentinel mission will be deployed on NASA's Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) in 2018. We will use the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a biosensor to study the effect of deep-space radiation on living cells. The BioSentinel mission will be the first investigation of a biological response to space radiation outside Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in over 40 years. Radiation can cause damage such as double stand breaks (DSBs) on DNA. The yeast cell was chosen for this mission because it is genetically controllable, shares homology with human cells in its DNA repair pathways, and can be stored in a desiccated state for long durations. Three yeast strains will be stored dry in multiple microfluidic cards: a wild type control strain, a mutant defective strain that cannot repair DSBs, and a biosensor strain that can only grow if it gets DSB-and-repair events occurring near a specific gene. Growth and metabolic activity of each strain will be measured by a 3-color LED optical detection system. Parallel experiments will be done on the International Space Station and on Earth so that we can compare the results to that of deep space. One of our main objectives is to characterize the microfluidic card activation sequence before the mission. To increase the sensitivity of yeast cells as biosensors, desiccated yeast in each card will be resuspended in a rehydration buffer. After several weeks, the rehydration buffer will be exchanged with a growth medium in order to measure yeast growth and metabolic activity. We are currently working on a time-course experiment to better understand the effects of the rehydration buffer on the response to ionizing radiation. We will resuspend the dried yeast in our rehydration medium over a period of time; then each week, we will measure the viability and ionizing radiation sensitivity of different yeast strains taken from this rehydration buffer. The data obtained in this study will be useful in finalizing the card activation sequence for this mission.

Yeast↗
NASA NTRS2017

Virtual Design of a 4-Bed Molecular Sieve for Exploration

Simulations of six new 4-Bed Molecular Sieve configurations have been performed using a COMSOL (COMSOL Multiphysics - commercial software) model. The preliminary results show that reductions in desiccant bed size and sorbent bed size when compared to the International Space Station configuration are feasible while still yielding a process that handles at least 4.0 kilograms a day CO2. The results also show that changes to the CO2 sorbent are likewise feasible. Decreasing the bed sizes was found to have very little negative effect on the adsorption process; breakthrough of CO2 in the sorbent bed was observed for two of the configurations, but a small degree of CO2 breakthrough is acceptable, and water breakthrough in the desiccant beds was not observed. Both configurations for which CO2 breakthrough was observed still yield relatively high CO2 efficiency, and future investigations will focus on bed size in order to find the optimum configuration.

Giesy, Timothy J.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Virtual Design of a 4-Bed Molecular Sieve for Exploration

Simulations of six new 4-Bed Molecular Sieve configurations have been performed using a COMSOL model. The preliminary results show that reductions in desiccant bed size and sorbent bed size when compared to the International Space Station configuration are feasible while still yielding a process that handles at least 4.0 kg/day CO2. The results also show that changes to the CO2 sorbent are likewise feasible. Decreasing the bed sizes was found to have very little negative effect on the adsorption process; breakthrough of CO2 in the sorbent bed was observed for two of the configurations, but water breakthrough in the desiccant beds was not observed. Nevertheless, both configurations for which CO2 breakthrough was observed still yield relatively high CO2 efficiency, and future investigations will focus on bed size in order to find the optimum configuration.

Giesy, Timothy J.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Co-Adsorption of Carbon Dioxide on Zeolite 13X in the Presence of Preloaded Water

Environmental Control and Life Support requires highly effective CO2 removal systems. The current system onboard the International Space Station is known as Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly. Recent high-fidelity simulation of this system predicted a major efficiency gain via reduction of desiccant zeolite. Commercial beaded 13X zeolite is used in the desiccant bed to scrub water below 1 ppm but is also a highly active CO2 sorbent. The simultaneous adsorption of water vapor and CO2 is known to strongly favor water, but more accurate measurements are needed. This work details the characterization of the zeolite to be used in the next-generation CO2 removal system for co-adsorption of water and CO2.

Cmarik, Gregory E↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lessons from Earth Bioaerosol Sampling for Venus Habitability & Biosignature Science

Venus’s clouds are often discussed as a potential habitat. Several high-priority science goals – cloud aerosol composition, internal radiative flux, and aerosol residence time and circulation models – will improve our understanding of Venus in an astrobiology context. Lessons from Earth’s aerobiosphere can inform these requirements and interpretation of results. A stable Venus aerobiosphere would need microorganisms to reproduce faster than they settle out due to gravity. This is a joint constraint of the potential nutrients and energy influx, bioenergetic costs such as desiccation and radiation damage, and aerosol dynamics. Though life cycles involving S- and Fe-based redox metabolism have been proposed, at an optimistic estimate of 75% H2SO4, Venus aerosol water activity (aw) is still ~0.02, far below the observed microbial growth limit of ~0.6. Long-term desiccation with brief spurts of repair, growth and reproduction in response to transient water influx (perhaps volcanism) is the most likely model for Earth-like life on Venus – a ‘desert bloom’ scenario. In Earth’s troposphere, clouds can carry 103 – 105 cells/mL, some metabolically active. A better analogue may be Earth’s stratospheric sulfate aerosol layer: supercooled sulfuric acid aerosols (acid weight fraction 0.6 – 0.85, 0.1 – 1 µm diameter, 0.1 – 1 cm-3) with little water activity, long residence times, high UV radiation, and only sporadic influx from surface particle sources. Viable cells isolated from this region are rare (~102 cells/m3), though ‘hot spots’ at tropospheric mixing occur. Cells are primarily in inactive forms such as spores, and it is unclear if any are associated with sulfate aerosols or simply co-located. Given the heterogeneities in Venus clouds and the model of a sparse, largely dormant ecosystem, a single transect on descent would most likely pass through a low-water, inactive region, missing potential signs of habitability or biosignatures. Even a passive aerial platform (balloon) may end up following a single air mass over its lifetime. A better strategy for Venus would target an aerial region with some upwelling from surface sources, and take multiple transects separated in time and space. Earth’s stratospheric bioaerosol population could provide a starting point for estimating the required lower volume and detection limits.

Earth↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lessons from Earth Aerobiology for Venus Astrobiology

Venus’s clouds have often suggested as a possible habitat. The constraints governing putative airborne life in such a habitat in turn inform priorities and strategies for remote and in situ exploration, methods by which resulting biosignatures might be detected, exoplanet habitability assessment, and planetary protection concerns. Lessons drawn from studying Earth’s aerobiosphere can help improve this understanding. There are altitude ranges within Venus’s clouds in which temperature, pressure, particle size, and radiation appear to be within the limits of microbial life on Earth, and life cycles involving S- and Fe-based redox metabolism have been proposed. However, given the lack of a habitable surface reservoir, a long-term stable Venus aerobiosphere would require that the reproduction rate of the airborne microbes be faster than the settling rate of airborne microbes due to gravity, or eventually the population would be depleted; put another way, the mean generation time would need to exceed the mean residence time. This creates a joint constraint of aerosol dynamics, potential nutrient availability and energy influx, and bioenergetic costs such as desiccation and radiation damage. Even at an optimistic estimate of 75% H2SO4, Venus aerosol water activity (aw) is still ~0.02, far below the observed microbial growth limit of ~0.6. Long-term desiccation with brief spurts of repair and growth in response to transient water influx, such as from volcanism, is the most likely model for Earth-like life on Venus – a ‘desert bloom’ scenario. Several high-priority science goals – cloud aerosol composition, internal radiative flux, and aerosol residence time and circulation models – thus will also improve our understanding of Venus in an astrobiology context. In Earth’s troposphere, warm water clouds can carry 103 – 105 cells/mL, some metabolically active. However, Earth’s stratospheric sulfate aerosol layer may be a better analogue: supercooled sulfuric acidaerosols (acid weight fraction 0.6 – 0.85, 0.1 – 1 μm diameter, 0.1 – 1 cm-3) with little water activity, long residence times, high UV radiation, and only sporadic influx from surface particle sources. Though ‘hot spots’ can occur associated with tropospheric mixing, viable cells in stratospheric samples are rare (~102 cells/m3), and primarily inactive forms such as spores. It is not yet clear whether such bioaerosols are associated with sulfate aerosols or simply co-located, and reproduction in situ has not yet been observed. In this model of a sparse, largely dormant Venus ecosystem, a single transect on descent is likely to pass through a low-water, inactive region, missing potential signs of habitability or biosignatures. A targeted strategy would sample through an aerial region with some upwelling from surface sources, andtake multiple transects separated in time and space. This is compatible with other in situ science goals seeking to understand the dynamics and heterogeneities of Venus’s clouds.

Lower atmosphere↗
NASA NTRS2022

Adaptation to environmental extremes structures functional traits in biological soil crust and hypolithic microbial communities

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are widespread in drylands and deserts. At the microhabitat scale, they also host hypolithic communities that live under semi-translucent stones. Both environmental niches experience exposure to extreme conditions such as high UV radiation, desiccation, temperature fluctuations, and resource limitation. However, hypolithic communities are somewhat protected from extremes relative to biocrust communities. Conditions are otherwise similar, so comparing them can answer outstanding questions regarding adaptations to environmental extremes. Using metagenomic sequencing, we assessed the functional potential of dryland soil communities and identified the functional underpinnings of ecological niche differentiation in biocrusts versus hypoliths. We also determined the effect of the anchoring photoautotroph (moss or cyanobacteria). Genes and pathways differing in abundance between biocrusts and hypoliths indicate that biocrust communities adapt to the higher levels of UV radiation, desiccation, and temperature extremes through an increased ability to repair damaged DNA, sense and respond to environmental stimuli, and interact with other community members and the environment. Intracellular competition appears to be crucial to both communities, with biocrust communities waging war using the Type VI Secretion System (T6SS) and hypoliths favoring diversity of antibiotics. The dominant primary producer had a reduced effect on community functional potential compared with niche, but an abundance of genes related to monosaccharide, amino acid, and osmoprotectant uptake in moss-dominated communities indicates reliance on resources provided to heterotrophs by mosses. Our findings indicate that functional traits in dryland communities are driven by adaptations to extremes and we identify strategies that likely enable survival in dryland ecosystems.

Biological soil crusts↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

New Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS REx Curation Facilities at Nasa Johnson Space Center

Asteroids are made up of rocky material that is left over from the formation of our solar system [1]. This material holds the key to unlocking information about the history of the planets and our sun. Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx are two sample return missions that have collected rocky material from carbonaceous asteroids which are rich in water, carbon, and organic compounds [1]. Hayabusa2 is a spacecraft that collected samples from asteroid Ryugu launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Samples were returned to Earth in December 2020 and 10 percent of the collected material is currently housed in a state-of-the-art laboratory at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) dedicated to Ryugu material [1]. OSIRIS-REx is a spacecraft launched by NASA that collected samples from asteroid Bennu. The samples are on their journey to Earth and will arrive in September 2023. They will be stored in a separate cleanroom dedicated to Bennu material. From these two missions, scientists will examine dust particles and rocky material to research clues on how the early solar system formed and how life began [2]. Because these samples are so precious and rare, it is important to keep them free from Earth contamination. In September of 2020, a massive construction project began to provide curation facilities to meet the needs of two incoming asteroid collections, Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx. Despite numerous setbacks caused by the coronavirus pandemic, these facilities have been completed in the fall of 2021. Some of these setbacks included strict PPE requirements, keeping safe working distances as well as access to the facilities as NASA was operating under a Stage 3 condition in response to the pandemic. These facilities will provide curation laboratories to safely house the precious asteroid samples as well as facilities to manipulate samples, do sample preparation and process samples into and out of the labs for future studies by the scientific community. The lab suite consists of several different rooms including an initial anteroom (ISO 7), a staging area (ISO 7), two gowning areas (one for OSIRIS-REx and one for Hayabusa2; both ISO 6)), the Haybusa2 Curation Laboratory (ISO 5), the OSIRIS-REx Curation Laboratory (ISO 5), an ultramicrotomy laboratory (ISO 7) and a thin section laboratory (not a cleanroom). To maintain cleanliness levels necessary for these lab spaces quarterly to monthly Balazs organic and inorganic sampling has been conducted on a regular basis before, during and after the construction project to monitor the cleanliness levels in the new labs that will house the asteroid samples. These new facilities feature a Ruuvi (Grafana) monitoring system that measures temperature, humidity, and pressure of the lab suite. This is a small puck shaped sensor that sends signals to the Grafana cloud where the data can be plotted and set up on dashboards within the lab suite. These sensors are easy to set up and install and they run off a cell battery that is good for 3-5 years before needing replacement. This system can deliver text messages and emails to the appropriate personnel when values fall outside of set limits. In addition to the monitoring system, this new lab suite features viewing windows from several different locations and sliding motion censored doors. We have obtained some state-of-the-art equipment to outfit the lab spaces (desiccators, microscopes, ultramicrotome) and are in the process of outfitting the suite with additional items such as: nitrogen gloveboxes, additional desiccators, micromanipulators, etc. The Hayabusa2 samples provided to NASA by JAXA included 23 millimeter sized grains and 4 containers with finer material. OSIRIS-REx is expected to return as much as 400 grams of asteroid Bennu. Samples will be stored in a nitrogen glove box and separated into nitrogen sealed transfer containers. Small Bennu and Ryugu particles will be handled and prepared (e.g., ultra-thin sections for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) or transmission electron microscopy (TEM)) using an Axis Pro micromanipulator and Leica EM UC7 ultramicrotome. Analyzing samples at the atomic scale will provide greater insight to the origins of the solar system and life formation on Earth. All the curation preparation for these sample collections is essential to ongoing research and efforts to understand our solar system, both nowand for future generations.

Curation↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Benchmarking Computational Tools for Calling SNPs and Indels in Complex Microbial Populations

The NASA BioNutrients missions seek to understand the suitability of microorganisms for bioproduction during space flight. One topic of interest is the stability of microbial genomes during long-term ambient storage and subsequent rehydration and growth. To address these questions, samples from 8 species were flown to ISS for 5 years of desiccated storage at ambient temperature (Stasis Packs) and 2 species were packaged along with powdered media inside a bioreactor system to allow hydration and growth in microgravity (Production Packs). For both systems, Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) of the DNA extracted from the returned samples and paired ground controls will be conducted to identify changes in genome stability due to time, storage conditions and growth in space. Across the technical replicates, ground controls, 10 timepoints, and multiple experimental conditions, ~300 samples have been selected for initial analysis with WGS sequencing to 100x coverage. A flexible and resource efficient mutation calling pipeline is needed to process this large dataset and allow for comparisons between species. Many bioinformatics tools for calling Indels and Single Nucleotide Variants (SNVs) are designed for use with pure isolates, where true variations from the reference genome are expected to dominate the reads aligning to the location of mutation. In contrast, DNA from the Stasis Pack (SP) samples was collected directly after recovery from desiccated storage and the Production Pack (PP) samples were collected after fermentation. In this context, reads with mutations are expected to be less frequent than reads that align with the reference genome, as each sample will include multiple lines of cells. Thus, BioNutrients samples are expected to be similar to samples from cancer cell or “pooled” sequencing approaches. In preparation for the analysis of the BioNutrients samples, we have tested three mutation calling tools (GATK for Microbes, BreSeq and DiscoSNP) designed for complex samples. A challenge of validating mutation identification pipelines is a lack of “Ground Truth” datasets, especially for complex samples. To compare these three tools, we sought to identify mutations in pre-existing WGS data collected from populations of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii that were exposed to UV mutagenesis and growth in LEO as part of the Space Algae-1 mission. Here we present a summary of these tools against the analysis originally conducted using the CRISP tool. Critical metrics are compared such as runtime, the number of SNPs, the number and size of Indels, and patterns of transversion and transitions identified by each tool are reported. By sharing these benchmarking results collected in support of the BioNutrients mission, we aim to guide others seeking to identify SNVs in similarly complex microbial samples.

Biology↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Development of Genetic Countermeasures for Enhancing Cellular Stress Tolerance on a Lunar Surface Mission

The Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications (LEIA) LEIA investigates the response to partial gravity and ionizing radiation of: Different DNA damage and stress response pathways and Bioproduction of antioxidants LEIA utilizes: Various strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which will be desiccated in fluidic cards and rehydrated on the lunar surface LEIA develops: Genetic countermeasures to improve tolerance to the desiccation process and the constraints associated with long duration missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO)

Neha Lingam↗
DOE OSTI2021

Removal of water vapor from streams containing carbon dioxide and/or carbon monoxide

Methods and systems for removing water vapor from a feed gas prior to further processing the feed gas according to a downstream PSA process are described. The feed gas can include CO2 and/or CO and/or H2 and the PSA process can be used to separate components of the feed gas from one another, for instance, for CO2 capture. Light product off of the PSA process is utilized to regenerate desiccant of a dryer used in the water vapor removal process that is carried out prior to the feed gas entering the PSA process. The water vapor removal process can be heated by providing thermal energy directly to the dryer and/or to a regenerating stream that regenerates the desiccant of the dryer. The thermal energy can be low cost energy—for instance, waste heat off of a system that provides the feed gas.

Ritter, James A.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Modeling of the effectiveness of novel edge seal designs for fast, low‐Cap‐Ex manufacturing

Abstract In the manufacturing of photovoltaic (PV) modules, the lamination process can take up to 20 min to complete. In this work, new lamination processes are being developed, and have been prototyped, which hope to be able to cut this time down to as little as 30 s. This could provide significant savings in the cost of lamination equipment, floor space, and energy. PV modules are expected to have a lifespan exceeding 20 to 30 years. For moisture‐sensitive PV technologies, the edge seal between the two layers of glass can be the weakest point of its reliability. There is an inherent challenge when evaluating edge seal materials due to their low permeation rates. As part of Colorado State University's Photovoltaic Research and Development 2, work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has developed models to evaluate edge seal configurations in glass‐glass PV modules. Here, this new manufacturing process is evaluated for long‐term moisture durability. Different edge seal design options within glass–glass PV modules are explored. Most of these designs are targeting a superstrate on glass configuration, e.g CdTe, but some designs could be used on conventional crystalline Si cells. Using COMSOL finite element simulation software, we investigated the edge seal and interlayer design configurations containing silicone perimeter edge adhesive, desiccated polyisobutylene‐based edge seal, air, and polyolefin while integrating climate conditions equivalent to a hot and humid environment such as Miami, Florida. We found optimized configurations that will allow the module to prevent moisture ingress over 50 years minimizing the amount of time and material used while utilizing polymers that are easily dispensed.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Labile assembly of a tardigrade protein induces biostasis

Abstract Tardigrades are microscopic animals that survive desiccation by inducing biostasis. To survive drying tardigrades rely on intrinsically disordered CAHS proteins, which also function to prevent perturbations induced by drying in vitro and in heterologous systems. CAHS proteins have been shown to form gels both in vitro and in vivo, which has been speculated to be linked to their protective capacity. However, the sequence features and mechanisms underlying gel formation and the necessity of gelation for protection have not been demonstrated. Here we report a mechanism of fibrillization and gelation for CAHS D similar to that of intermediate filament assembly. We show that in vitro, gelation restricts molecular motion, immobilizing and protecting labile material from the harmful effects of drying. In vivo, we observe that CAHS D forms fibrillar networks during osmotic stress. Fibrillar networking of CAHS D improves survival of osmotically shocked cells. We observe two emergent properties associated with fibrillization; (i) prevention of cell volume change and (ii) reduction of metabolic activity during osmotic shock. We find that there is no significant correlation between maintenance of cell volume and survival, while there is a significant correlation between reduced metabolism and survival. Importantly, CAHS D's fibrillar network formation is reversible and metabolic rates return to control levels after CAHS fibers are resolved. This work provides insights into how tardigrades induce reversible biostasis through the self‐assembly of labile CAHS gels.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗