BRIC-23 GeneLab Process Verification Test: Staphylococcus aureus transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data

Microbes interact with humans in complex ways and understanding how they respond to the spaceflight environment is important to the success of future manned spaceflight missions. The BRIC-23 mission was designed to measure the response of Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus to the spaceflight environment. This experiment aimed to produce high quality omics data from B. subtilis and S. aureus grown aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to allow comparison to matched ground controls. There were two primary objectives for this experiment: (1) Demonstrate all post-flight processes and operations required for successful completion of GeneLab Reference Missions conducted on ISS, and (2) Generate high quality GeneLab Reference Mission omics data sets for two prokaryotic model organisms, Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus. Freezing Control Experiment: The BRIC hardware has significant thermal inertia, thus the freezing rate of samples placed at -80 C is quite slow. This could affect RNA-sequencing, proteomic and metabolic data sets. In an effort to understand how slow freezing could affect these data sets, a control experiment was designed in which B. subtilis and S. aureus were grown in petri plates and either slow frozen to -80 C at a rate matching the BRIC-23 spaceflight samples or processed immediately to harvest RNA and protein. B.subtilis omics data is deposited in GLDS-138.

微生物与人类以复杂方式相互作用，阐明其对航天环境的应答机制，对未来载人航天任务的成败至关重要。本BRIC-23任务旨在探究枯草芽孢杆菌（Bacillus subtilis）与金黄色葡萄球菌（Staphylococcus aureus）对航天环境的应答反应。本实验旨在获取在国际空间站（ISS）内培养的上述两种菌株的高质量组学（omics）数据，以便与匹配的地面对照组开展对比分析。本实验设有两项核心目标：其一，验证在国际空间站开展GeneLab参考任务所需的全部飞行后流程与操作环节，确保任务顺利完成；其二，为两种原核模式生物——枯草芽孢杆菌与金黄色葡萄球菌——生成符合GeneLab参考任务标准的高质量组学数据集。冷冻对照实验：BRIC硬件具备显著的热惰性，因此置于-80℃环境下的样品冷冻速率极慢，这可能对RNA测序、蛋白质组与代谢组数据集产生影响。为明确慢速冷冻对上述数据集的具体影响，本研究设计了一项对照实验：将枯草芽孢杆菌与金黄色葡萄球菌接种于培养皿中培养后，分别以两种方式处理——以与BRIC-23航天样品一致的速率慢速冷冻至-80℃，或立即进行收获以提取RNA与蛋白质。枯草芽孢杆菌的组学数据已存入GLDS-138。