N.C. Researchers to Study Plants, Space
RALEIGH, N.C. — Four North Carolina State University researchers have been asked by NASA to determine how greens ultimately can be grown on the red planet.
The space agency selected biologists at N.C. State’s Kenan Institute to design experiments for the International Space Station that test how plants adapt to life in space or on another planet.
If Americans voyage to Mars one day, live plants would greatly aid the mission, but people don’t yet know how to grow crops or anything else there.
"Plants support us here on Earth, and plants will support us on Mars," said Chris Brown, director of space programs at the institute.
The experiments look for ways to build on the strengths of plants, which cope well to adverse conditions. When water supplies dry up, they conserve moisture. If they get knocked down, they make their leaves reach toward the sun and their roots toward the ground to stay alive.
In space, those adaptations may be difficult to complete.
"If they get that confused, they are dead," Brown said.
If the molecular mechanisms that make their coping possible can be harnessed and altered, science one day might engineer plants better suited to conditions on other planets, Brown said.
Mars has less than half of Earth’s gravity and an atmosphere that’s nearly 95 percent carbon dioxide. Winter temperatures plunge as low as minus-180 degrees.
"There are a lot of important things that we have to do" before trips to Mars are feasible, said Terri Lomax, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for research. This experiment is one of them, Lomax said.
In the experiments, expected to occur in about two years, Brown and his team will use Arabidopsis, a mustard weed frequently tinkered with in molecular biology labs. The scientists will ship normal weeds, as well as weeds made less sensitive to gravity, to the space station.
Using genomics tools, they will try to capture the molecular means the plants use to try to adapt.
"In the absence of gravity, other factors might become more important. If there is any light, is that how plants will orient?" asked researcher Imara Perera, who created the genetically modified plants for the North Carolina team.
The scientists can’t be sure when a space shuttle can ferry their experiments to the space station. A shuttle has not flown since Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in February 2003. Discovery is expected to launch next year.
The space station also has had trouble recently. Earlier this month, an American and Russian aboard the station were instructed to eat less to save their dwindling food supplies.
Still, the scientists are confident their projects will get there. Wendy Boss, another N.C. State team member, said the experiments also could deliver insight on how other creatures, including people, function.
"We need to understand the fundamental biology of all different organisms," Boss said. "They all represent different pieces of the same pie."
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