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Background: Understanding and countering the well-established negative health consequences of spaceflight remains a primary challenge preventing safe deep space exploration. Targeted/personalized therapeutics are at the forefront of space medicine strategies, and cross-species molecular signatures now define the ‘typical’ spaceflight response. However, a lack of direct genotype–phenotype associations currently limits the robustness and, therefore, the therapeutic utility of putative mechanisms underpinning pathological changes in flight. Methods: We employed the worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a validated model of space biology, combined with ‘NemaFlex-S’ microfluidic devices for assessing animal strength production as one of the most reproducible physiological responses to spaceflight. Wild-type and dys-1 (BZ33) strains (a Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) model for comparing predisposed muscle weak animals) were cultured on the International Space Station in chemically defined media before loading second-generation gravid adults into NemaFlex-S devices to assess individual animal strength. These same cultures were then frozen on orbit before returning to Earth for next-generation sequencing transcriptomic analysis. Results: Neuromuscular strength was lower in flight versus ground controls (16.6% decline, p < 0.05), with dys-1 significantly more (23% less strength, p < 0.01) affected than wild types. The transcriptional gene ontology signatures characterizing both strains of weaker animals in flight strongly corroborate previous results across species, enriched for upregulated stress response pathways and downregulated mitochondrial and cytoskeletal processes. Functional gene cluster analysis extended this to implicate decreased neuronal function, including abnormal calcium handling and acetylcholine signaling, in space-induced strength declines under the predicted control of UNC-89 and DAF-19 transcription factors. Finally, gene modules specifically altered in dys-1 animals in flight again cluster to neuronal/neuromuscular pathways, suggesting strength loss in DMD comprises a strong neuronal component that predisposes these animals to exacerbated strength loss in space. Conclusions: Highly reproducible gene signatures are strongly associated with space-induced neuromuscular strength loss across species and neuronal changes in calcium/acetylcholine signaling require further study. These results promote targeted medical efforts towards and provide an in vivo model for safely sending animals and people into deep space in the near future. Full article

Anthropogenic activities (e.g., rural urbanization) play major roles in preventing the achievement of sustainable water quality, where eutrophication—the exacerbation of increase in nutrient concentrations combined with warmer temperatures and lower light availability, leading to the dense growth of plant life depleting the amount of available oxygen and killing aquatic life—remains a major challenge for surface water bodies. Filtration mechanisms, with a wide range of applicability, capture common waterborne pathogens as small as 0.1–20.0 μm (bacteria, cysts, spores) and 0.001–0.100 μm (protein, viruses, endotoxins) through the process of microfiltration and ultrafiltration. This study follows the premise of using a designed water flow-through system, with meltblown nonwoven fabrics to measure its performance to capture water contaminant constituents of surface water contamination and eutrophication: total coliforms, nitrate, and orthophosphate. The achieved fabric filtration mechanism showed capture of total coliforms (59%), nitrate (51%), and orthophosphate (46%). The current study provides an alternative solution to more common and traditional water treatment technologies, such as chlorine and ozone disinfection, which (1) introduces disinfection or treatment byproducts and (2) cannot adapt to the permanent changing conditions and newer environmental challenges. Full article