Christina Heidorn

U of T engineering and life sciences students to test how changes in gravity affect human genetics

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 17:12:39 +0000

U of T engineering and life sciences students to test how changes in gravity affect human genetics

geoff.vendeville Wed, 08/18/2021 - 13:12

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Astronaut David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency takes pictures of the Earth below from inside the International Space Station's "window to the world," the seven-windowed cupola (photo courtesy NASA)

Christina Heidorn

Topic

Breaking Research

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Aerospace

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Life Sciences

Undergraduate Students

A team of ��Ƶ students is preparing to see its research take off next week.

They are among just six university teams from across Canada selected to conduct a study in a microgravity environment aboard the National Research Council Canada’s (NRC) Falcon 20 jet – the same plane used to train the Canadian Space Agency’s astronauts.

As part of the Canadian Reduced Gravity Experiment Design Challenge (CAN-RGX), the team – called TelOmG – has spent the past year designing and building a unique experiment to examine the impact of space flight on astronauts’ genes.

The members of team TelOmG, from left to right, are Erin Richardson, Anthony Piro, Miranda Badovinac in the top row; Taylor Peters, Dunja Matic, Luca Castelletto in the middle row; Samantha Aberdein, Emma Belhadfa, Nicole Richardson, Krish Joshi, and MacKenzie Campbell in the bottom row (photos courtesy of team TelOmG)

During the flight, scheduled for Aug. 19, the students will investigate the effects of changes in gravity on the genetic regulation of human telomeres. Telomeres are protective caps at the ends of our chromosomes that are linked to genomic stability. Shortening of telomeres is associated with aging, while lengthening can be associated with cancer.

The idea for the experiment came to team lead Erin Richardson, a fourth-year student in engineering science in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, while reading NASA’s landmark Twins Study, an investigation of spaceflight’s effects on the human body. The study focused on American astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year in space, and his twin brother Mark who remained earthbound, and found Scott’s telomeres unexpectedly grew longer during his space flight. They returned to normal shortly after his return to Earth. In contrast, his twin’s telomeres remained stable during the same period.

“Our experiment investigates whether this increase in telomere length was due to reduced gravity or some other factor, such as increased radiation or stress during the space flight,” says Richardson.

Flying parabolic manoeuvres on the NRC’s Falcon 20 will allow the team to isolate microgravity from the other factors present on the International Space Station. However, while Kelly spent months in space, the experiment will only undergo five, 20-second periods of microgravity.

The students had to devise a way to test whether telomeres are affected by microgravity in under 20 seconds. “Telomere length won’t change that fast,” says Richardson. “The key was to focus on the transcription of the genes that control them. Previous studies found transcriptomes changed significantly within 20 seconds of altered gravity.”

Richardson recruited other students from engineering science's aerospace and biomedical systems majors as well as from the life sciences. In addition to Piro, the team includes: MacKenzie Campbell, a graduate of engineering science and master's student in chemical engineering; Dunja Matic and Taylor Peters, both in their fourth year of engineering science; Emma Belhadfa and Luca Castelletto in year three of engineering science; year three life science student, Miranda Badovinac; and Grade 12 students Samantha Aberdein, Krish Joshi, and Nicole Richardson.

The aerospace engineering team members focused on designing and building the physical apparatus, while biomedical systems and life science students designed and tested the experiment’s scientific methods.

“One of the beautiful things that happens when you bring together people with so many different backgrounds, is the ingenuity in the questions they ask each other,” says Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalez, an associate professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and chair of engineering science's biomedical systems major. “Those questions often challenge dogmas and assumptions and can ultimately lead to amazing discoveries.”

To test their hypothesis that microgravity contributes to changes in gene transcription related to telomeres, the students will “freeze cells in time” by preserving their nucleic acids before and after each short period of microgravity. They will analyze the nucleic acids after the flight for changes in the expression levels of genes that regulate telomeres.

The experiment’s apparatus consists of a syringe filled with a stabilization solution and connected to a series of chambers containing live cells. The electronic control system will inject the solution into the correct chamber when manually triggered by the students on board the flight just before and after each period of microgravity. Some samples are frozen before any periods of hypergravity or microgravity to control for environmental conditions on board the jet.

The TelOmG injection system (graphic courtesy of team TelOmG)

The entire experiment had to fit into a 50-centimetre cube and weigh no more than 45 kilograms, among other constraints. “Little things that you wouldn’t normally consider are much more challenging in microgravity,” says Castello, the team’s mechanical lead.

“For example, we had to ensure everything is absolutely leak-proof and secured so that there’s no chance of small components or liquid floating around the plane’s cabin. Since we are dealing with cells, we had to create a sterile system while also minimizing bubbles that could interfere with our fluid pathways.”

Team TelOmG presented their proposal at the Johnson Space Centre Astronomical Society in June and has been invited to share their findings at the International Astronautical Congress in Dubai in October.

Conducting research during a pandemic presented additional challenges. Access to wet labs and lab safety training was restricted. “We’ve been blown away by the support we received from professors, researchers and private companies during this time,” Belhadfa says. “They helped us to get what we needed when public health restrictions created obstacles.”

Team members also had to work on components in isolation for many months. “Normally when we work in a team and something goes wrong during equipment testing, we have a good laugh together,” Castelletto says. “It’s a lot less funny when you’re all alone in your house.”

Planning and testing a complex experiment from start to finish has been an eye-opening journey for the team. “From our experiences in design courses like Praxis, we knew to expect things not to go as planned,” Campbell says. “We really learned to take a wide view of the project and lean on our project management skills.”

Exploring microgravity: U of T engineering students and their experiment to fly aboard a Falcon-20 jet

ullahnor — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 19:06:36 +0000

Exploring microgravity: U of T engineering students and their experiment to fly aboard a Falcon-20 jet

ullahnor Mon, 07/24/2017 - 15:06

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Caulan Rupke (left) and Michael Lawee (right) aboard a Falcon-20 jet (photo courtesy of Team AVAIL's Twitter account)

Christina Heidorn

Author legacy

Christina Heidorn

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Space

Undergraduate Students

Graduate Students

Students

Four U of T engineering students are preparing for the flight of a lifetime.

They've earned the rare chance to take an experiment they designed onto a Falcon-20 jet, an aircraft similar to those used to prep astronauts for the feeling of weightlessness. The students will take twelve to fourteen parabolic flights of about 20 seconds each that simulate the experience of microgravity.

Their goal is to better understand how liquids flow in microgravity and to explore how 3D printers could make long-term space missions more feasible.

Neell Young, Caulan Rupke, Michael Lawee and Andrew Ilersich make up Team AVAIL (Analyzing Viscosity And Inertia in Liquids), one of four teams chosen to participate in the Canadian Reduced Gravity Experiment Design Challenge (CAN-RGX). The competition, supported by the National Research Council and the Canadian Space Agency, tries to create “tangible student-led impact in space exploration and development.”

“None of us has any experience with this kind of flight, so I’m heading to Canada’s Wonderland to ride all of the roller coasters for training,” jokes Rupke.
From left to right, Caulan Rupke, Neell Young, Andrew Ilersich and Michael Lawee make up Team AVAIL (photo courtesy of Team AVAIL)

For the project, Team AVAIL, which is made up of fourth year undergrads and students in the master's program, chose to focus on a phenomenon known in physics as the “liquid rope coil” effect. On Earth, this is seen most clearly when a thick liquid like honey or maple syrup is poured from a spout or a spoon – the liquid flows in a way that looks like a coiling rope.

But the phenomenon isn’t well understood.

“We were surprised that this hasn’t been given the full treatment yet in the scientific literature,” says Ilersich. “It turns out to be a very complex process to describe mathematically.”

In 3D printers, melted thermoplastics flow under pressure from nozzles before hardening to form the desired product. These plastics behave as a viscous liquid that is similar in many ways to honey or maple syrup.

Because of this, understanding the liquid rope coil effect – including how it is affected by microgravity – is an important prerequisite to the use of 3D printers in space.

Printing in 3D could address a key challenge for space missions: the need to minimize the space and weight of materials needed for the trip. Rather than bringing along all of the tools and spare parts they might possibly need, astronauts could instead manufacture objects on an as-needed basis. Because raw materials like thermoplastics can be packed much more tightly than tools of varying shapes and sizes, the approach could make long-term missions like a trip to Mars more feasible.

“We think our project was chosen because of its novelty and its applications,” says Ilersich.

A better understanding of the physics behind the rope coil effect would also have applications here on Earth. With a reliable mathematical model, the effect could be controlled to create coils that could be woven together into materials with customized strength, flexibility “springiness.” New porous materials could also be created for use in tissue engineering, filtration and catalysis.

To study rope coiling in microgravity, the team custom-built a self-contained experiment that had to fit inside a 50 cm x 50 cm x 50 cm box provided by the flight organizers. Because existing off-the-shelf pumps did not meet their needs, the team custom-built an apparatus that carefully controls the flow of a viscous liquid – in this case corn syrup – through fifteen different nozzles.

A video camera inside of the box will record the rope coiling of the liquid, and custom-built software will analyze it.

Team AVAIL will be in Ottawa July 24 to 28 for three days of training and then the flight.

Follow their progress on Twitter and YouTube.

The team's apparatus is packed inside a box measuring 50 cm x 50 cm x 50 cm. It contains pumps and tubes that simulate the operation of a 3D printer. To simulate a molten thermoplastic, the team is using ordinary corn syrup (photo by Michael Lawee)

New $5 million NSERC network uses enzymes for greener manufacturing

sgupta — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:26:40 +0000

New $5 million NSERC network uses enzymes for greener manufacturing sgupta Tue, 12/02/2014 - 09:26

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Professor Elizabeth Edwards heads up the new Industrial Biocatalysis Network based at U of T (photo by Sara Collaton)

RJ Taylor

Christina Heidorn

Author legacy

Christina Heidorn & RJ Taylor

Topic

Breaking Research

Tackling dirty water, childhood hunger

sgupta — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 11:06:23 +0000

Tackling dirty water, childhood hunger sgupta Wed, 10/08/2014 - 07:06

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Mother’s Milk – the team behind an innovative new device for pumping and preserving milk in developing nations – was one of two projects that recently received Grand Challenges Canada grants (photo by Roberta Baker)

Christina Heidorn

Author legacy

Christina Heidorn

Topic

Global Lens