A bone-stimulating hormone is produced in mutant lettuce, according to research. The simple act of chowing down on a huge salad might one day enable astronauts to avoid skeletal deterioration. It may also help prevent osteoporosis in resource-poor locations on Earth, according to the scientists who studied the lettuce.
As earlier investigations of astronauts on long-term spaceflights have revealed, they often lose over 1% of their bone density each month; a phenomenon called osteopenia. In order to keep their bone mass in check, personnel onboard the International Space Station follow specific training regimes.
As early as the 2030s, NASA is gearing up to send people to Mars. Microgravity, which occurs throughout the three-year mission, will indeed cause astronauts’ bone density to decrease. Over the course of the three-year mission, astronauts may be more susceptible to developing osteopenia and, ultimately, osteoporosis. An injection of peptide fragments of human parathyroid hormone (PTH) might help stabilize bone density in microgravity, but every day doses are required for the medicine to be effective.
If you have a few hundred transgenic seeds in a container approximately the length of your thumb, you may plant them like normal lettuce. Cosmonauts have previously demonstrated that they can produce ordinary lettuce on the International Space Station despite the restricted resources.
As a method of genetic engineering in the laboratory, scientists utilized Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a microbe often utilized to infiltrate plant cells with bacterial DNA.
Scientists haven’t tried the salad since it hasn’t been tested for safety, but they expect it to be just like conventional lettuce, as many other transgenic vegetables do. Prior to being served to astronauts, scientists must first adjust the PTH-Fc levels of expression and then assess the lettuce’s capacity to inhibit bone deterioration in animal studies as well as human clinical testing.
The study will be presented during the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
