Location
Radisson Resort at the Port, Convention Center, Jamaica Room
Start Date
27-4-1999 2:00 PM
Description
Quantifying the radiation dosage and damage to biological systems, especially to humans during repetitive high altitude flight and during long duration space flight is important for several reasons. Radiation can cause altered biosynthesis and long term genotoxicity resulting in cancer and birth defects etc. Radiation damage to biological systems depends in a complex way on incident radiation species and their energy spectra. TY.pically non-biological, i.e. film or electronic monitoring systems with narrow energy band sensitivity are used for dosimetry and then results are extrapolated to biological models. For this reason it may be desirable to perform radiation dosimetry by using biological molecules e.g. DNA or RNA strands as passive sensors. The Association of Small Payload Researchers in conjunction with Texas A&M University and Broward Community College have constructed a genotoxicology experiment to determine the degree to which in-vitro naked DNA extracted from tissues of a variety of vertebrate organisms including man, chicken, and fish, is damaged by exposure to cosmic radiation in a space environment. The DNA is assayed by means of agarose gel electrophoresis to determine the average length of DNA strands in each sample. It is hoped that a low mass low cost passive biological system to determine dose-response relationship (increase in strand breaks with increase in exposure) can be developed to perform radiation dosimetry in support of long duration space flight, and to predict negative effects on biological systems (e.g. astronauts and greenhouses) in space. Initial results of a genotoxicology and radiation dosimetry experiment (ASPR-GRaDEx-1) are presented.
The payload orbited on the space shuttle Discovery (STS-91) in June of 1998. The study has been supported by the Florida Space Institute, NASA, ASPR, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University, Boeing-KSC, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, the Florida Space Grant Consortium, Broward and Brevard Community Colleges, the University of Miami, and Belen Jesuit High School.
Paper Session I-B - Passive Radiation Dosimetry on STS-91 Using DNA: Initial Results from ASPR-GRaDEx-1
Radisson Resort at the Port, Convention Center, Jamaica Room
Quantifying the radiation dosage and damage to biological systems, especially to humans during repetitive high altitude flight and during long duration space flight is important for several reasons. Radiation can cause altered biosynthesis and long term genotoxicity resulting in cancer and birth defects etc. Radiation damage to biological systems depends in a complex way on incident radiation species and their energy spectra. TY.pically non-biological, i.e. film or electronic monitoring systems with narrow energy band sensitivity are used for dosimetry and then results are extrapolated to biological models. For this reason it may be desirable to perform radiation dosimetry by using biological molecules e.g. DNA or RNA strands as passive sensors. The Association of Small Payload Researchers in conjunction with Texas A&M University and Broward Community College have constructed a genotoxicology experiment to determine the degree to which in-vitro naked DNA extracted from tissues of a variety of vertebrate organisms including man, chicken, and fish, is damaged by exposure to cosmic radiation in a space environment. The DNA is assayed by means of agarose gel electrophoresis to determine the average length of DNA strands in each sample. It is hoped that a low mass low cost passive biological system to determine dose-response relationship (increase in strand breaks with increase in exposure) can be developed to perform radiation dosimetry in support of long duration space flight, and to predict negative effects on biological systems (e.g. astronauts and greenhouses) in space. Initial results of a genotoxicology and radiation dosimetry experiment (ASPR-GRaDEx-1) are presented.
The payload orbited on the space shuttle Discovery (STS-91) in June of 1998. The study has been supported by the Florida Space Institute, NASA, ASPR, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University, Boeing-KSC, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, the Florida Space Grant Consortium, Broward and Brevard Community Colleges, the University of Miami, and Belen Jesuit High School.
