Bone is a dynamically remodeled tissue that requires gravity-mediated mechanical stimulation for maintenance of mineral content and structure. Homeostasis in bone occurs through a balance in the activities and signaling of osteoclasts, osteoblasts, and osteocytes, as well as proliferation and differentiation of their stem cell progenitors. Microgravity and unloading are known to cause osteoclas...

Density difference fluid flows and sedimentation of growing crystals are greatly reduced when crystallization takes place in a reduced gravity environment. In the case of macromolecular crystallography a crystal of a biological macromolecule is used for diffraction experiments (x-ray or neutron) so as to determine the three-dimensional structure of the macromolecule. The better the internal ord...

Recent studies have demonstrated that miRNAs can play important roles in osteoblast differentiation and bone formation. However, the function of miRNAs in bone loss induced by microgravity remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the differentially expressed miRNAs in both the femur tissues of hindlimb unloading rats and primary rat osteoblasts (prOB) exposed to simulated microgravity. S...

Muscle atrophy, a reduction of muscle mass, strength, and volume, results from reduced muscle use and plays a key role in various muscular diseases. In the microgravity environment of space especially, muscle atrophy is induced by muscle inactivity. Exposure to microgravity induces muscle atrophy through several biological effects, including associations with reactive oxygen species (ROS). This...

TO THE EDITOR: After two decades of animal studies on vascular adaptation to microgravity using the rat analog (for review, see Ref. 3), it is gratifying to note the recently published findings on space-flown mice by Sofronova and coworkers (1). They demonstrate that both vasoconstrictor and vasodilator properties are attenuated in basilar arteries (BA) isolated from the mice flown 30 days on a...

Microgravity as well as chronic muscle disuse are two causes of low back pain originated at least in part from paraspinal muscle deconditioning. At present no study investigated the complexity of the molecular changes in human or mouse paraspinal muscles exposed to microgravity. The aim of this study was to evaluate longissimus dorsi adaptation to microgravity at both morphological and global g...

The age at which astronauts experience microgravity is a critical consideration for skeletal health and similarly has clinical relevance musculoskeletal disuse on Earth. While are extensively studied bone other physiological changes, rodent studies enable direct evaluation of changes with microgravity. Yet, mouse spaceflight have predominately evaluated tissues from young, growing mice. We micr...

Human hematopoietic prostaglandin synthase, one of the better therapeutic target enzymes for allergy and inflammation, was crystallized with 22 inhibitors and in three inhibitor-free conditions in microgravity. Most of the space-grown crystals showed better X-ray diffraction patterns than the terrestrially grown ones, indicating the advantage of a microgravity environment on protein crystalliza...

Space flight exerts substantial effects on fluid volume control in humans. Cardiac distension occurs during the first 1-2 days of space flight relative to supine and especially upright 1g conditions. Plasma volume contraction occurs quickly in microgravity, probably as a result of transcapillary fluid filtration into upper-body interstitial spaces. No natriuresis or diuresis has been observed i...