>> The Dragon cargo ship which arrived
at the station late last month carried opals
and another large payload
and its unpressurized section, its trunk.
It also carried many, many other science payloads inside the
freight carrier a number of new experiments that have come
to space designed to take advantage
of the low earth orbit environment.
One of these new experiments is called Bio Tube MICRO
and it's focused on how plants sense and respond to gravity.
The principal investigator Dr. Karl Hasenstein joins us this
morning from his office at the University
of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Dr. Hasenstein people have been looking at how plants do
in space for a long time.
Generally, how do they do?
>> Well, generally they do quite well especially once they get
exposed to the proper environment.
Initially, we did not know what it means to grow plants
in the absence of gravity but it turns out it wasn't gravity
that was the culprit in not succeeding with plant growth.
It was the lack of convection and as a result the distribution
of gases and so forth that prevented proper development.
But we have come a long way and learned how to do it
in the meantime, so we can grow plants quite well.
>> The gravity is still a factor right?
What caused you to be focused on that aspect?
>> Well, it's a conundrum more than 100 years to find
out why every tree grows upright and anchors itself in the soil
and this basic question as to how tiny cells
that don't have specialized features such as we have
in our vestibular apparatus are able to sense and respond
to gravity it's just puzzling and one of the aspects
of detecting how these things work, ideally requires
to remove gravity as a factor
and this way we can gradually test our individual components
of this system that makes plants sense and respond to all kinds
of stimuli, respond to gravity
and that's what this experiment is about.
>> Okay, take us through your plan then.
What are you going to be-- what have you sent to space
and what are you going to be doing in that hardware on orbit?
>> Well, the Bio Tube MICRO is an external shell
that contains the actual experiment
and the actual experiment consists
of so-called magnetic chambers
and within these chambers we have a series
of exactly 10 magnets that are aligned
so that they generate a very strong magnetic field.
Inside this field we distort this uniform magnetic field by,
you could call it magnet lenses
that in reality [inaudible] magnetic wedges and what does
that have to do with how plants respond to gravity?
These magnetic radians that result by inserting these wedges
into the uniform magnetic field exert what we call a
magnetophoretic force and that force is specific
for diamagnetic compounds such as the middle class
that are the suspected gravity sensors.
>> It sounds like you're manipulating the gravity pull
on parts of the plant.
>> That's correct but we don't exert a pull.
We exert a push.
These high-graded magnetic fields repel these starch-filled
middle class and by doing so they produce the same effect
that we see under the influence of gravity
without having any other study the component exposed to gravity
so we can pinpoint whether the middle class is actually doing
the initiation of the sensing and response to gravity
by virtue of moving them
around in their respective cells we call them statocytes.
>> Very interesting.
Do the crew members participate in this in some way?
>> Not really.
They were helpful in stowing the hardware into the express rack
on ISS but the actual experiment is entirely controlled from KFC.
>> Okay. I assume then you flown this on Dragon.
You're going to get these sample back.
What do you do with them when you get them?
>> Well, we will analyze different things one is the
distribution of these middle class
after we have seen downlinked video
to indicate whether we observe actually curvature in the roots
so we have the video equipment that takes pictures
in the infrared region of this spectrum.
As you can see it finds if the roots curve.
When we come back we will correlate distribution
of the middle class within these statocytes
to the observed curvature and we will also do a series
of genetic tests to see if gene expression has changed
in the close conditions that we had in space.
At the same time we do so-called immunocytolocalization
of relevant proteins that are responsible
for the growth response of cells or roots in general.
>> So there's still plenty of study
to be done once you get the samples back?
>> Yes indeed.
>> Now, I found it very interesting that I saw
that you ran this experiment on the last flight of Columbia
and we're still able to get some results back
from downlinked images, right?
>> Yeah. That's correct.
It was unfortunate that we could not get biological
material back.
But the down link suggested strongly that we had curvature
as we had expected but we're not able to confirm this
because we never received the actual plant material.
>> Is your goal to simply improve the way plants grow
in space or does this have applicability on earth?
>> Well, anytime you have better or deeper understanding
as to how plants perform and respond to environmental cues
or problems you are bound
to benefit processes on earth as well.
So while we clearly want to establish a means
of directionally controlling plant growth in space,
we also want to use that gained knowledge
for improvement of plants on earth.
>> Dr. Hasenstein, thank you for taking a few minutes
for us this morning and good luck with the experiment.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Karl Hasenstein is the principle investigator
of Bio Tube MICRO.
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