Space triggers at least 37 protein changes in humans, reveals new study
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New insights into how cells sense and respond to the weightlessness experienced in space were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology on March 28.
The findings could help keep astronauts healthy on future space missions.
What happens to the human body in space?
The gravitational conditions of space, known as microgravity, trigger a unique set of cellular stress responses. Now, researchers have discovered that the protein modifier SUMO plays a critical role in cellular adaptation to simulated microgravity.
“Under normal gravity conditions, SUMO is known to respond to stress and to play a critical role in many cellular processes, including DNA damage repair, cytoskeleton regulation, cellular division, and protein turnover,” said Professor Rita Miller, who led the study in a press release.
“This is the first time that SUMO has been shown to have a role in the cell’s response to microgravity.”
SUMO can interact with proteins through two chemical bonds: non-covalent interactions with binding partners or covalent bonding to target lysines.
In yeast cells - a common model organism for studying cellular processes - the researchers examined both types of interactions. They examined cells that had gone through six cellular divisions in either normal Earth gravity or microgravity simulation using a specialized cell culture vessel created by NASA.
They started by comparing the protein expression levels for cells that experienced each gravity condition to determine which microgravity stress impacted cellular processes. They then used mass spectroscopy to more precisely determine which proteins interacted with SUMO to determine what was causing these protein changes.
The researchers discovered 37 proteins that physically interacted with SUMO in the cells experiencing microgravity and displayed expression levels that were more than 50 percent different from those of the cells experiencing Earth gravity.
Because radiation damage is a significant risk in space, these 37 proteins included some crucial for DNA damage repair. Also included were other proteins vital in energy and protein production, maintaining cell shape, cell division, as well as protein trafficking inside cells.
“Since SUMO can modify several transcription factors, our work may also lead to a better understanding of how it controls various signaling cascades in response to simulated microgravity,” added Miller.
The next step for the researchers is to ascertain whether specific proteins lacking the SUMO modification cause harm to the cell when it is placed in a microgravity simulation.
Jeremy Sabo, a graduate student in Miller’s laboratory, will present the findings at Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, March 25–28 in Seattle.
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