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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC): Tissue and Microbe Biospecimens to Advance Space Research

The NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC) is a biorepository of non-human biospecimens from NASA-funded spaceflight investigations and correlative ground studies. The collection has its roots in the 1960s through collaborations by NASA Ames Research Center with other NASA centers, universities, and international space agencies by sharing non-human biospecimens from spaceflight and space-relevant ground experiments. These collaborations have advanced the field of space exploration by helping to maximize the data gained from spaceflight and other NASA-funded experiments. NBISC coordinates closely with the Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP) which is responsible for organized sample collection from spaceflight and ground rodent experiments. In 2022 NBISC partnered with HRP’s Biospecimen and Tissue Sharing Collection (BTSC) Program to also archive samples from HRP’s Space Radiation Element-funded studies which primarily involve rodents exposed to various radiation protocols at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) and other analog facilities. To date, more than fifty thousand biospecimens from BTSC have been transferred to NBISC for distribution to the community. In 2023, NBISC embarked on a new Space Biology funded endeavor to create the Space Microbial Culture Collection (SMCC) which will serve as a central repository for microbial isolates associated with space flight, gravitational, and space radiation research. This presentation will highlight several success stories of analyses carried out using archived NBISC samples received by researchers in recent years and will detail the process for proposing and receiving samples from NBISC, BTSC and SMCC. Making available these 150,000+ unique biospecimens to the scientific research community, NBISC not only serves as a repository for storing and distributing non-human biospecimens, but also acts as a resource to enable new discoveries that will benefit NASA and humankind.

NBISC↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC): Tissue and Microbe Biospecimens to Advance Space Research

The NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC) is a biorepository of non-human biospecimens from NASA-funded spaceflight investigations and correlative ground studies. The collection has its roots in the 1960s through collaborations by NASA Ames Research Center with other NASA centers, universities, and international space agencies by sharing non-human biospecimens from spaceflight and space-relevant ground experiments. These collaborations have advanced the field of space exploration by helping to maximize the data gained from spaceflight and other NASA-funded experiments. NBISC coordinates closely with the Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP) which is responsible for organized sample collection from spaceflight and ground rodent experiments. In 2022 NBISC partnered with HRP’s Biospecimen and Tissue Sharing Collection (BTSC) Program to also archive samples from HRP’s Space Radiation Element-funded studies which primarily involve rodents exposed to various radiation protocols at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) and other analog facilities. To date, more than fifty thousand biospecimens from BTSC have been transferred to NBISC for distribution to the community. In 2023, NBISC embarked on a new Space Biology funded endeavor to create the Space Microbial Culture Collection (SMCC) which will serve as a central repository for microbial isolates associated with space flight, gravitational, and space radiation research. This presentation will highlight several success stories of analyses carried out using archived NBISC samples received by researchers in recent years and will detail the process for proposing and receiving samples from NBISC, BTSC and SMCC. Making available these 150,000+ unique biospecimens to the scientific research community, NBISC not only serves as a repository for storing and distributing non-human biospecimens, but also acts as a resource to enable new discoveries that will benefit NASA and humankind.

Biospecimen↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Discovery Through Biospecimen Sharing: The Nasa Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC)

NASA Ames Research Center has fostered collaborations with other NASA centers, universities, and international space agencies by sharing non-human biospecimens from spaceflight and space-relevant ground experiments since the 1960s. These collaborations have advanced the field of space exploration by helping to maximize the data gained from spaceflight experiments. Non-human tissues archived from experiments funded by NASA’s Space Biology and Human Research Programs (HRP) are available for request through the NASA Life Sciences Portal (NLSP) and distributed by the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC). NBISC coordinates closely with the Ames Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP) which is responsible for sample collection from spaceflight and ground experiments. NBISC currently houses more than 90,000 biospecimens in its facility at NASA Ames. Until recently, NBISC primarily distributed samples from Space Biology funded research. In 2022 NBISC partnered with HRP Space Radiation Element to also archive samples from studies which primarily involve rodents exposed to galactic cosmic radiation simulations at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) and other analog facilities. In this presentation we will highlight several success stories of analyses carried out using archived NBISC samples received by researchers in recent years and will detail the process for proposing and receiving samples from NBISC. Making available these 90,000+ unique biospecimens to the scientific research community, NBISC not only functions as a resource for storing and distributing non-human biospecimens, but as a warehouse for future discoveries for the benefit of NASA and humankind.

NBISC↗
NASA NTRS2017

The NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive: Biobanking for the Final Frontier

The NASA Ames Institutional Scientific Collection involves the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) and a biospecimen repository, which are responsible for archiving information and non-human biospecimens collected from spaceflight and matching ground control experiments. The ALSDA also manages a biospecimen sharing program, performs curation and long-term storage operations, and facilitates distribution of biospecimens for research purposes via a public website (https:lsda.jsc.nasa.gov). As part of our best practices, a tissue viability testing plan has been developed for the repository, which will assess the quality of samples subjected to long-term storage. We expect that the test results will confirm usability of the samples, enable broader science community interest, and verify operational efficiency of the archives. This work will also support NASA open science initiatives and guides development of NASA directives and policy for curation of biological collections.

Biobank↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Spaceflight Biospecimen Sharing in Support of Science Discovery and Exploration

For decades, NASA and international partners have flown non-human biological experiments in space to understand the effects of spaceflight and address potential biological hazards. Sending organisms into space is a costly endeavor which makes space-flown biological specimens a valuable resource. To enable maximum scientific return, samples not required by the Principal Investigators are harvested and collected mostly by NASA’s Space Biology Biospecimen Sharing Program. These specimens are collected according to well-established SOPs that maintain quality and integrity. The specimens are then preserved, archived, and made available to the international scientific community through NASA’s Institutional Scientific Collection (ISC) at Ames Research Center (ARC). The ISC-ARC biospecimens and descriptive metadata are findable and accessible for request through the Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA). The NASA ISC-ARC currently stores over 32,000 specimens from Shuttle, International Space Station, and ground-based investigations (spaceflight analog experiments involving either hindlimb unloading, centrifugation, or partial weight-bearing study designs). Tissues are predominantly from mice and rats, though samples are also available from bacteria and quail. The specimens include tissues from many physiological systems including musculoskeletal, neurosensory, reproductive, respiratory, circulatory, and digestive. Tissues are stored at -80°C, -20°C, +4°C, or ambient and preserved in various fixatives. Descriptive metadata is available for all samples. Historically, these tissues have been used for a wide range of analyses, including histology, genomics, and transcriptomics. Plans are underway to expand the ISC-ARC beyond the mostly-rodent contents, to include a space-relevant microbial culture collection including bacteria, fungi, and yeast. This expansion of the ISC-ARC will now involve identifying and standardizing best practices for microbial curations. To ensure safe long-term storage of microbial isolates, a microbiology laboratory will be dedicated for identification, cell culture, and lyophilization. Awarding of tissue to public science investigators has resulted in 33 publications since 2011, with 48 requests being submitted since 2016. Of note, NASA GeneLab has been awarded ISC-ARC biospecimens in the past few years. GeneLab processes the biospecimens to generate various levels of ‘omics’ data, which are published on GeneLab’s open access online platform for bioinformatics analysis and visualization. This has helped a systems biology community grow around the processed-biospecimens’ datasets, resulting in many new publications and insights. Websites: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/isc-bsp ; https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Biospecimen

Ryan T. Scott↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Institutional Scientific Collection and Biospecimen Sharing Program at Ames Research Center

For decades, NASA and their international partners have flown and conducted non-human biological experiments in space to understand the effects of spaceflight and address potential biological hazards. It is imperative to understand the basic science and health risks associated with spaceflight, along with developing countermeasures, as humanity ventures back to the Moon, and then to Mars and beyond. Sending organisms into space is a costly endeavor which makes space-flown biological specimens a valuable resource. To enable maximum scientific return, samples not required by the Principal Investigators are harvested, preserved and archived in NASA’s Institutional Scientific Collection (ISC) at Ames Research Center (ARC). These specimens are collected according to well-established SOPs that maintain their quality and integrity. To enable new discoveries, the samples are then made available to the international scientific community through NASA’s Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP). The NASA ISC currently stores over 32,000 specimens from Shuttle, International Space Station and ground-based investigations. Tissues are predominantly from mice and rats, though samples are also available from bacteria and quail. The specimens include tissues from all biological systems including musculoskeletal, neurosensory, reproductive, respiratory, circulatory, and digestive and are stored at -80°C, -20°C, +4°C, or ambient. Descriptive metadata is available for all samples. Historically, these tissues have been used for a wide range of analyses, including histology, genomics, and transcriptomics. Also available through the ISC are tissue from NASA’s Space Radiation Laboratory. To study the effects of space radiation, researchers irradiate biological specimens and unused samples are made available through the LSDA. These biospecimens and data are made available through the public Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA) website to promote basic discovery, pre-clinical and clinical science. Visit the NASA ISC-BSP website for more information. Websites: https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/ ; https://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/isc-bsp

Space Flown Biospecimens↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Institutional Scientific Collection and Biospecimen Sharing Program at Ames Research Center

For decades, NASA and their international partners have flown and conducted non-human biological experiments in space to understand the effects of spaceflight and address potential biological hazards. It is imperative to understand the basic science and health risks associated with spaceflight, along with developing countermeasures, as humanity ventures back to the Moon, and then to Mars and beyond. Sending organisms into space is a costly endeavor which makes space-flown biological specimens a valuable resource. To enable maximum scientific return, samples not required by the Principal Investigators are harvested, preserved and archived in NASA’s Institutional Scientific Collection (ISC) at Ames Research Center (ARC). These specimens are collected according to well-established SOPs that maintain their quality and integrity. To enable new discoveries, the samples are then made available to the international scientific community through NASA’s Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP). The NASA ISC currently stores over 32,000 specimens from Shuttle, International Space Station and ground-based investigations. Tissues are predominantly from mice and rats, though samples are also available from bacteria and quail. The specimens include tissues from all biological systems including musculoskeletal, neurosensory, reproductive, respiratory, circulatory, and digestive and are stored at -80°C, -20°C, +4°C, or ambient. Descriptive metadata is available for all samples. Historically, these tissues have been used for a wide range of analyses, including histology, genomics, and transcriptomics. Also available through the ISC are tissue from NASA’s Space Radiation Laboratory. To study the effects of space radiation, researchers irradiate biological specimens and unused samples are made available through the LSDA. These biospecimens and data are made available through the public Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA) website to promote basic discovery, pre-clinical and clinical science. Visit the NASA ISC-BSP website for more information.

Space Flown Biospecimens↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

HRP Data Management Plan

The purpose of Human Research Program Data Management Plan (DMP) is to define the processes and activities required for the overall management of the research data collected and managed by HRP throughout their life cycle. New updates to the Data Management Plan in 2023 include 1. CAPABILITIES AND SERVICES Data Repositories. Principal Investigators (PIs) funded by HRP may be asked to submit data to one of several NASA data repositories. HRP archives data in the NASA Life Sciences Portal (NLSP) that it considers to be unique and high value. This includes data from human subjects in space flight (ISS and commercial flights) and ground analogs to spaceflight; spaceflight tech demos involving humans; human omics data including the microbiome; parabolic flight studies; and the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL). The Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) includes The Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA), used to archive non-human biological data (e.g., animal) generated by the Human Research program, and GeneLab, available to HRP PIs to archive non-human omics data. Catalog for search and retrieval. A catalog of non-human HRP life science experiments, with all associated descriptions (mission, payload, hardware, and personnel related information), and biospecimens is provided on the NLSP public web site for search and retrieval. 2. IRB ROLE IN RETURN OF INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH RESULTS The NASA IRB manages the process for incidental findings and for returning results to subjects for studies for which NASA IRB is the IRB of record. Omics data, especially genomics data, may generate information significant to the health of or risk to a research subject. These data potentially hold the keys to understand lifetime risks of chronic diseases, such as cancer, as well as risks associated with exposures common in space flight. 3. UPDATE OF TERMS – IDENTIFIABLE AND ATTRIBUTABLE DATA HRP now follows Federal and NASA policy by using “identifiable” instead of “attributable” for Personally Identifiable Information (PII). 4. POLICY ABOUT INTERNAL NON-RESEARCH USE OF DATA The HRP Chief Scientist grants access to data from HRP-funded research for non-research internal use that includes program management, customer facilitation, strategic planning, and risk research planning. Typical HRP personnel granted access to HRP research data for internal use include the Element Scientist, Subject Matter Experts (SME), and Data/bioinformatics Scientists. If data accessed for Internal Use is provided to an intramural or extramural scientist for hypothesis driven research, all Federal and NASA regulations (e.g., IRB review) regarding human subject research apply.

Data Management Plan↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Field Guide to NASA’s Life Sciences Data Repositories

For over 30 years, NASA has invested in life sciences research both in space and on the ground. Data accessibility is an important tool for researchers, and NASA has committed to preserving this vital resource for ongoing use. The Life Sciences Data Archive’s multi-center collaboration between NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Ames Research Center, and Kennedy Space Center is geared toward preserving unique and high-value data from a wide variety of disciplines, data collection methods, and species within NASA’s Life Sciences Portal (NLSP). The data generated by the Human Research Program (HRP) require a systematic approach to data preservation that accounts for diverse data sources, formats, physical storage requirements, and security and privacy protections. This poster presentation will provide a guide to the repositories where the various types of human, non-human animal, plant, and microbial data NASA generates are archived and tips for navigating these data collections. Topics will include where different types of data, metadata, and biospecimens are archived or preserved, how the federated repositories work together as a data preservation ecosystem, and how researchers can access each repository’s collections.

Robert S Beaton↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Field Guide to NASA’s Life Sciences Data Repositories

For over 30 years, NASA has invested in life sciences research both in space and on the ground. Data accessibility is an important tool for researchers, and NASA has committed to preserving this vital resource for ongoing use. The Life Sciences Data Archive’s multi-center collaboration between NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Ames Research Center, and Kennedy Space Center is geared toward preserving unique and high-value data from a wide variety of disciplines, data collection methods, and species within NASA’s Life Sciences Portal (NLSP). The data generated by the Human Research Program (HRP) require a systematic approach to data preservation that accounts for diverse data sources, formats, physical storage requirements, and security and privacy protections. This poster presentation will provide a guide to the repositories where the various types of human, non-human animal, plant, and microbial data NASA generates are archived and tips for navigating these data collections. Topics will include where different types of data, metadata, and biospecimens are archived or preserved, how the federated repositories work together as a data preservation ecosystem, and how researchers can access each repository’s collections.

LSDA↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science for Life in Space: Data Sharing and Tools for Knowledge Discovery

The next era in human space exploration is rapidly approaching and will require the use of countermeasures to deep space health hazards. The development of countermeasures (or, the re-purposing of existing agents) will be highly dependent on our understanding of basic biological responses to space stressors (e.g. ionizing radiation, altered gravitational fields, altered day-night cycles, confinement, isolation, hostile-closed environments, distance-duration from Earth, exposure to celestial regolith, etc.). The fast-growing array of space biological data, which in the past was simply archived after minimal analysis, holds great potential if it can be reorganized and formatted for Open Science. Organizing the data for such analysis is a challenge because of its diverse nature (molecular, cellular, tissue, imaging, whole organism and behavior). We will discuss here several strategies that NASA’s Biological and Physical Science Division has put in place to maximize the return on investment for spaceflight bioscience data. Open Science, as a scientific philosophy, is the concept that the more people who have access to the data, the more knowledge will be gained from it. This guiding principle led NASA to develop GeneLab in 2015. GeneLab houses spaceflight and relevant ground-based multi-omics data, and has grown to ~400 transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and epigenomic datasets from plant, rodent, small animal, and microbial space experiments. GeneLab provides users with various tools for data analysis and a visualization portal that allows users to interact with gene expression data from space-related ‘omics experiments. Open Science is also about building scientific communities, and with this spirit in mind, GeneLab has spawned several Analysis Working Groups (AWGs), comprised of more than 200 volunteer scientists. The AWGs initially provided feedback on the processing pipeline and metadata ‘omics standards for GeneLab. Over the last few years, they have become a community-driven science enterprise, engaging in large meta-analysis of GeneLab datasets, resulting in 10 publications (beyond the originally submitted research). Overall, the Open Science nature of GeneLab has resulted in a high degree of data re-use, resulting in 38 additional publications derived from the original 67 publication over the past four years. The enormous success and knowledge gained from GeneLab has led to a collection of sister NASA “Open Science Data Repositories (OSDR)” and research support groups. These include the NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA), the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC), and the Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP). All are adopting the GeneLab data architecture system to maximize open-access, find-ability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR). ALSDA collects and curates phenotypic-physiological bioimaging-behavioral data from space and space-relevant non-human experiments, oftentimes coming from the same omics-associated experimental datasets found in GeneLab. Since 2021, a community of ~100 researchers have rallied around ALSDA, to provide feedback in a new ALSDA AWG focused on phenotypic-physiological investigation-sample-assay metadata standards (e.g., Micro-Computed Tomography, Light/Fluorescence Microscopy, Western Blot, Flow Cytometry, Novel Object Recognition, Elevated Plus Maze, etc. of ~50 assays collected). These standards are part of a new single point-of-entry data submission portal for all non-human Space Biology and Human Research Program principal investigators, to submit, curate, and share their research data. With open-access space biological data now collected and curated together with rich metadata, and with the potential for linkage to “big data” from the international biological and medical communities (NIH, EBI, etc.), the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) era has started for Space Biology. Several other talks will cover these topics in this conference.

life sciences↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science for Life in Space: Data Sharing and Tools for Knowledge Discovery

The next era in human space exploration is rapidly approaching and will require the use of countermeasures to deep space health hazards. The development of countermeasures (or, there-purposing of existing agents) will be highly dependent on our understanding of basic biological responses to space stressors (e.g. ionizing radiation, altered gravitational fields, altered day-night cycles, confinement, isolation, hostile-closed environments, distance-duration from Earth, exposure to celestial regolith, etc.). The fast-growing array of space biological data, which in the past was simply archived after minimal analysis, holds great potential if it can be reorganized and formatted for Open Science. Organizing the data for such analysis is a challenge because of its diverse nature (molecular, cellular, tissue, imaging, whole organism and behavior). We will discuss here several strategies that NASA's Biological and Physical Science Division has put in place to maximize the return on investment for spaceflight bioscience data. Open Science, as a scientific philosophy, is the concept that the more people who have access to the data, the more knowledge will be gained from it. This guiding principle led NASA to develop GeneLab in 2015. GeneLab houses spaceflight and relevant ground-based multi-omics data, and has grown to ~400 transcriptomatic, proteomic, metabolomic and epigenomic datasets from plant, rodent, small animal, and microbial space experiments. GeneLab provides users with various tools for data analysis and a visualization portal that allows users to interact with gene expression data from space-related 'omics experiments. Open Science is also about building scientific communities, and with this spirit in mind, GeneLab has spawned several Analysis Working Groups (AWGs), comprised of more than 200 volunteer scientists. The AWGs initially provided feedback on the processing pipeline and metadata 'omics standards for GeneLab. Over the last few years, they have become a community-driven science enterprise, engaging in large meta-analysis of GeneLab datasets, resulting in 10 publications (beyond the originally submitted research). Overall, the Open Science nature of GeneLab has resulted in a high degree of data-use, resulting in 40 enabled publications by open data. The enormous success and knowledge gained from GeneLab has led to a collection of sister NASA "Open Science Data Repositories (OSDR)" and research support groups. These include the NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA), the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC), and the Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP). All are adopting the GeneLab data architecture system to maximize open-access, find-ability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR). ALSDA collects and curates phenotypic-physiological bioimaging-behavioral data from space and space-relevant non-human experiments, oftentimes coming from the same omics-associated experimental datasets found in GeneLab. Since 2021, a community of ~100 researchers have rallied around ALSDA, to provide feedback in a new ALSDA AWG focused on phenotypic-physiological investigation-sample-assay metadata standards (e.g., Micro-Computed Tomography, Light/Flourescence Microscopy, Western Blot, Flow Cytometry, Novel Object Recognition, Elevated Plus Maze, etc. of ~50 assays collected). These standards are part of a new single point-of-entry data submission portal for all non-human Space Biology and Human Research Program principal investigators, to submit, curate, and share their research data. With open-access space biological data now collected and curated together with rich metadata, and with the potential for linkage to "big data" from the international biological and medical communities (NIH, EBI, etc.), the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) era has started for Space Biology.

omics↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Metadata Entry Optimization For NASA's Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC)

The NASA Biological Institutional Sample Collection (NBISC) at NASA’s Ames Research Center is a critical resource housing non-human samples collected from spaceflight missions and ground analog studies, primarily consisting of specimens from rats, mice, and select microbes. The primary objective of NBISC is to systematically receive, document, preserve, and facilitate access to these samples for the global scientific community. NBISC promotes international collaboration and maximizes the return on investment for precious tissues from spaceflight and analog experiments. Researchers can request physical samples through an online request form and subsequent written proposal review process. This study addresses two core research objectives: streamlining the NBISC sample lifecycle processes and strategizing for managing an influx of 50,000 tissue samples from a series of cosmic radiation analog experiments carried out at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) by Drs. Eleanor Chang (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and Polly Blakely (SRI). The Chang/Blakely studies investigated Harderian gland (HG) tumorigenesis in mice exposed to low dose and LET radiation comprising 8 different exposure protocols in over 4000 mice. NBISC sample metadata is stored in a Laboratory Information Management System (SLIMS). To streamline sample data entry, we customize python scripts using information extracted from the individual experimental protocols. The scripts automate entry into multiple SLIMS data fields including protocol name, unique sample barcode, tissue and sub-tissue information, freezer location, sample preservation method, etc. The semi-automated procedure significantly decreases the time spent on data entry by several orders of magnitude. Automation and data organization are essential, as they free up time for curation and promotion of the collection which, in turn, increase the accessibility of samples to the broader research community. NBISC benefits from streamlined data ingestion, and the methodologies developed here are applicable to other projects which use SLIMS including the NASA Biospecimen Sharing Program and GeneLab. As of Fall 2023, plans include transferring sample data from SLIMS to public facing repositories (OSDR and NLSP), expanding the reach of the Chang/Blakely sample collection. The Human Research Program Space Radiation Element plans to transfer non-human tissues from many more investigations to NBISC in the coming year.

Biospecimen↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Metadata Entry Optimization for NASA's Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC)

The NASA Biological Institutional Sample Collection (NBISC) at NASA’s Ames Research Center is a critical resource housing non-human samples collected from spaceflight missions and ground analog studies, primarily consisting of specimens from rats, mice, and select microbes. The primary objective of NBISC is to systematically receive, document, preserve, and facilitate access to these samples for the global scientific community. NBISC promotes international collaboration and maximizes the return on investment for precious tissues from spaceflight and analog experiments. Researchers can request physical samples through an online request form and subsequent written proposal review process. This study addresses two core research objectives: streamlining the NBISC sample lifecycle processes and strategizing for managing an influx of 50,000 tissue samples from a series of cosmic radiation analog experiments carried out at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) by Drs. Eleanor Chang (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and Polly Blakely (SRI). The Chang/Blakely studies investigated Harderian gland (HG) tumorigenesis in mice exposed to low dose and LET radiation comprising 8 different exposure protocols in over 4000 mice. NBISC sample metadata is stored in a Laboratory Information Management System (SLIMS). To streamline sample data entry, we customize python scripts using information extracted from the individual experimental protocols. The scripts automate entry into multiple SLIMS data fields including protocol name, unique sample barcode, tissue and sub-tissue information, freezer location, sample preservation method, etc. The semi-automated procedure significantly decreases the time spent on data entry by several orders of magnitude. Automation and data organization are essential, as they free up time for curation and promotion of the collection which, in turn, increase the accessibility of samples to the broader research community. NBISC benefits from streamlined data ingestion, and the methodologies developed here are applicable to other projects which use SLIMS including the NASA Biospecimen Sharing Program and GeneLab. As of Fall 2023, plans include transferring sample data from SLIMS to public facing repositories (OSDR and NLSP), expanding the reach of the Chang/Blakely sample collection. The Human Research Program Space Radiation Element plans to transfer non-human tissues from many more investigations to NBISC in the coming year.

Sample Repository↗