Technology Development of Lemna japonica (Duckweed) for Human Therapeutic Production in Space

Further exploration into deep space comes with certain needs for the development of new technologies. Any long-duration spaceflight must be self-reliant for many key resources that cannot be provided by resupply from Earth, due to time, distance, and cost restraints. The exposure to the space environment on these missions also comes with known risks, such as the effect of microgravity on the body leading to muscle atrophy and bone density loss. One potential countermeasure for these effects is to using pharmaceuticals to counteract the conditions, but this comes with issues of increasing load on the shuttle, as well as the unknowns of medication expiration and effects of the space environment on the stability. These issues could be addressed with the use of a dual-purpose biological system onboard the shuttle, that serves as both a source of food and platform for producing therapeutics, optimizing the working constraints within this low resource environment. Here, in this proposal I propose to implement the well-known gene-editing technology of CRISPR to modify the aquatic plant Lemna japonica (duckweed), with the goal of easily creating stable transgenic lines expressing specific therapeutic proteins. The extracellular domain of the activin A type 2B receptor fused to a human IgG Fc region will be tested here as a target protein because of its potential use as a preventative therapeutic countermeasure to the muscle atrophy and bone density loss caused by microgravity. Expression of this protein in the Lemna japonica platform will then be validated under simulated space environmental conditions to ensure consistent protein production and activity.

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