Health
According to scientists, genetically modified lettuce is the future of food and medicine in space.Let’s explain
Want to go to Mars? If you do so, you may end up eating a lot of lettuce. However, it is not ordinary lettuce.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis have genetically engineered lettuce to produce a drug based on human hormones that keeps bones strong.
This is the latest development in a new field of designing foods and medicines suitable for long-distance space travel.
Astronauts lose about 1 percent of their bone mass on average in space each month.
“Currently, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are doing specific exercise therapies to maintain bone mass,” said Kevin Yates, who presented the team’s study at the American Chemical Society earlier this week. Says.
“But they are usually not at the International Space Station for more than six months.”
It takes about 3 years to get to and from Mars (unless left behind like Mars’ Mark Watney).
Not only do you need to engage in serious training to prevent bone loss during that period, but you will also have to inject yourself with parathyroid hormone (PTH) daily.
Let’s take a closer look at how this lettuce fits into the future of space travel.
Why lettuce?
Currently, astronauts aboard the ISS are primarily eating ration packs, with occasional fresh food delivered when new spacecraft arrive.
This means that “menu fatigue” will begin soon, said Matthew Gilliham, director of the Weight Institute at the University of Adelaide.
“Astronauts lose 10% of their weight in the first few weeks of being on the space station, partly because of a monotonous diet,” said Professor Giliham.
Therefore, NASA has experimented with the following plant growth: lettuce At the ISS.
“Lettuce grows so fast that it’s great,” said Jenny Mortimer, who is studying future plants at the Weight Institute.
Growing plants with microgravity can be difficult. Some plants do not grow in the right direction and water can attach to the roots and leaves of the plant and kill them.
NASA uses a system of fans and LED lights to keep the mini garden alive.
In addition to lettuce, we have also succeeded in growing barley, radish, and more recently chili peppers.
“It added excitement to their food because they absolutely put peppers in everything,” said Professor Giliham.
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Enlivening the menu isn’t the only reason scientists are experimenting with growing their own vegetables.
The cost of feeding the ISS is estimated at $ 20,000-40,000 per kilogram, with each crew eating about 1.8 kilograms per day.
Crew members who go to Mars for three years chew about 10,000 to 11,000 kg of food.
In addition to the cost of carrying and storing these tons of chow chow, the most perishable vitamins such as vitamins B and C last only 12 months.
Dr. Mortimer said DIY vegetable patches not only provide space travelers with fresh flavors and nutrients in the short term, but are also especially important for long-term residence.
“I can’t carry everything around,” she said.
“The plants are great because they can be seeded.”
How to turn lettuce into medicine?
According to Professor Giliham, there has been a major move in the last few years to start producing molecules, drugs and even plastics for living organisms.
Plants are easier to grow and modify than unicellular organisms such as bacteria and yeast.
“You can put [the molecule] In different parts of the plant tissue, you can save it in different parts of the leaves that are not so problematic for the plant to preserve it, “he said.
Some medicines, such as dopamine used in Parkinson’s disease and insulin used by diabetics, are made by modifying plants such as tomatoes and extracting and purifying the medicine.
“But this team’s approach is different. They produce molecules in plants and can give their leaves to humans,” said Professor Giliham.
Researchers attached the molecule to the genetic code of the parathyroid hormone to maintain stability and then transferred it to lettuce via bacteria.
The idea is that astronauts can eat rather than inject medicines.
“There will be some uses where lettuce is the best option, but there will be other uses that you need to purify,” said Professor Giliham.
This plant is classified as genetically modified because it has an additional gene that converts modest lettuce to edible medicine.
That is, it can only grow in a controlled environment under current regulations.
“Using gene editing [known] Medicinal plants … to make them suitable for space and other uses, “said Professor Giliham.
“It’s non-GM. For example, genetically edit a cannabis plant to produce a particular compound.”
When will this lettuce appear in the space menu?
In the near future, many cos will not appear in the menu.
Preliminary results show that, on average, plants produce about 10-12 milligrams of modified hormone per kilogram of fresh lettuce.
This means that astronauts now need to eat eight glasses of lettuce a day to get enough hormones to keep their bones strong.
The team then tries to fine-tune the lettuce to make the drug production more efficient. That way, astronauts don’t have to eat that much.
They also want to see how it grows on the ISS.
Also, neither animals nor humans have been tested for safety, so no one knows the taste yet.
“If you’re taking medicine, you want to know how much you’re taking,” Dr. Mortimer said.
“When thinking about dosage, you may want to do some cleansing, or you may have some control over what is being produced.
“That’s one question. Are you confident in the amount of lettuce produced per leaf?”
However, with at least 10 more years to travel to Mars, the team has plenty of time to complete the lettuce.
And if Professor Giliham and Dr. Mortimer give way, lettuce may not be the only homemade produce on the menu by then.
Is this the food of the future?
If you’ve played near Australian waterways, you may be familiar with spirodela.
“It’s a really attractive plant. It divides every few days, so it grows on the surface,” Dr. Mortimer said.
In other words, the production of Spirodela polyrhea You can scale up very quickly.
Although it is an aquatic plant, its closest relatives are wheat and barley. And it’s packed with nutrition.
“It has a good balance of protein, starch and fat … and it’s pretty easy to digest,” she said.
“The World Health Organization has long been interested in it as a food product, but it doesn’t look particularly appetizing.”
Not only does it take much less time to grow than grains, but it can eat every part of the plant, according to Professor Giliham.
“It’s a zero waste plant.”
Professor Giliham said that studying plants like lettuce and spirodela can not only benefit space travelers in the future, but also provide more sustainable food, medicine and other materials on the planet. rice field.
“This is an example of using a cosmic lens to improve the sustainability of the Earth here,” he said.
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