Astronauts Could Someday Grow Lettuce in Space to Prevent Possible Bone Loss Due to Mars Mission

NASA is currently preparing for its three-year mission that will send astronauts to the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s, exposing them to a long period of microgravity, resulting in bone loss.

Now, as specified in a Phys.org report, scientists have reported transgenic lettuce that produces a bone-stimulating hormone. One day, astronauts could grow the said lettuce in space and help prevent bone loss by eating a large bowl of salad. In addition to that, the lettuce might help ward off osteoporosis in resource-limited sites on Earth, the authors of the new research said.

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(Photo: Pexels/Polina Kovaleva)
One day, astronauts could grow special lettuce in space and help prevent bone loss by eating a large bowl of salad.

'Osteopenia'

Previous research of astronauts on extended space missions has found that they lose more than one percent, on average, of bone mass each month spent in space, a condition also called "osteopenia."

A related SciTech Daily report specified right now, astronauts on the International Space Station or ISS have some exercise regimens to attempt to retain bone mass, explained graduate student Kevin Yates, who is presenting the work at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society or ACS.

Yates added that they're not usually on the ISS for more than six months. On the contrary, it takes roughly ten months to get to Mars, and the astronauts would stay for approximately one year to examine the planet before making the trip home to this planet.

Essentially, the three-year Mars mission could leave astronauts susceptible to osteopenia, and, eventually, osteoporosis. A drug containing a peptide fragment of human parathyroid hormone or PTH stimulates the formation of the bones and could help restore bone mass in microgravity although it needs daily injections, as indicated in a related Popular Science report.

Thumb-Sized Vial to Grow in Space Like the Regular Lettuce

Transporting large amounts of the medication and syringes and administering them during space missions is not practical. Therefore, Somen Nandi, Ph.D., and Karen McDonald, Ph.D., together with their colleagues, wanted to determine a way for astronauts to produce it themselves while they enjoy some tasty greens, which are seriously lacking in astronauts mostly freeze-dried and canned diets.

Nandi explained that astronauts could carry transgenic seeds, which are extremely small. One can have a few thousand seeds in a vial roughly the size of the thumb, and grow them like the standard lettuce. He added the plants could be used to synthesize pharmaceuticals like PTH on an as-needed basis and then consume the plants.

Transgenic Lettuce Expressing PTH Peptide

On the ISS, astronauts have already shown they can grow regular lettuce in this resource-limited place. McDonald, Nandy, and Yates, at the University of California, Davis, wanted to develop transgenic lettuce that expresses the PTH peptide in a form that could be orally taken rather than by injection.

The special lettuce might help treat osteopenia as swell, in areas of Earth that lack access to traditional drugs. To increase the stability and bioavailability of PTH in the body, the researchers attached a piece of another protein, the Fc or fragment crystallizable domain of the human body, to the sequence of PTH.

To Test Both Animals and Humans

Scientists may have not tasted the lettuce yet as its safety has not been established; they expect that it will taste very similar to its regular counterpart, like many other transgenic plants.

Before the transgenic lettuce can land the plates of astronauts, there's a need for researchers to optimize the PTH-Fc expression levels. Then, they will test the lettuce for its ability to safely stop bone loss in both animal models and human clinical tests.

Nevertheless, Yates has predicted, he would be very surprised that, by the time astronauts are sent to Mars, plants are not being used to produce pharmaceuticals and other beneficial compounds.

Report about the special lettuce to grow in space is shown on the American Chemical Society Meeting Newsroom's YouTube video below:

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