Study of Fruit Flies’ Immunity can Help Avoid Weaker Immunity on Space Flights

Researchers led by Deborah Kimbrell from the University of California, Davis have shed new light on how microorganisms alter fruit flies' immunity in space and in hypergravity, or increased gravity, a new study published in the journal Drosophila reveals. This study suggests that having normal gravity or hypergravity on the space station may help mitigate some of the biological problems, including weakened immune response, in organisms living in space. Since fruit flies have similar immune response mechanisms to humans, this knowledge may help NASA create specialized counter measures to keep astronauts healthy during long-duration space missions to an asteroid or Mars.

Knowledge that spaceflight weakens the human immune system obtained from years of research in microgravity has led scientists to use model organisms similar to humans to test out various scenarios of disease or weakened immunity in spaceflight. Model organisms, such as plants, fruit flies or microbes like yeast, advance our understanding of the influence of microgravity on cells. Taking these organisms to space allows for examination of growth and development and physiological, psychological and aging processes without the impact of gravity.

"What we don't realize in our everyday lives is that every biological, chemical and physical process that takes place in our terrestrial environment of Earth happens under the influence of gravitational forces," explained Camille Alleyne, Ed.D., space station assistant program scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Conducting scientific investigations on the space station, such as that on the fruit flies, allows us to remove that gravitational element from the equation, and advances our knowledge about these same processes that lead to amazing breakthroughs and discoveries."

Drosophila melanogaster - the common fruit fly - was used in this study, due to its similar human immune function qualities, sharing characteristics of cellular and humoral, or extracellular fluids, immunity and signaling pathways. The fruit fly makes such a great model, in fact, that NASA developed a new Fruit Fly Lab in 2014 to accommodate continued study of Drosophila. This facility will support longer duration studies involving multiple generations of fruit flies.



Source-Eurekalert