Synthetic biological circuit tested in spaceflight

Synthetic biology has potential spaceflight applications yet few if any studies have attempted to translate Earth-based synthetic tools into spaceflight. An exogenously inducible biological circuit for protein production in Arabidopsis thaliana , pX7-AtPDSi (Guo et al. 2003), was flown ISS and functionally investigated. Seedlings were grown a custom built 1.25 U plant greenhouse. Images recorded during the experiment show that leaves of seedlings photobleached as designed while wild type Col-0 did not, which reveals led Polymerase chain reaction analysis post-flight also confirms Cre/LoxP (recombination system) portions functional The subcomponents circuit, estrogen-responsive transcription factor XVE, DNA recombination system, RNAi post-transcriptional gene silencing system now flight heritage can be incorporated future designs space applications. To facilitate space, full payload design manufacturing files are made available.