Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics

The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and International Astronaut Biobank

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

Nature via PubMed

September 3, 2024

Filed under astronaut, Axiom, Cornell Aerospace Medicine Biobank, epigenomics, genetics, genomics, human, Inspiration4, metabolomics, microbiome, NASA Twins Study, POLARIS, proteomics, space biology, space life science, space medicine, Space Omics and Medical Atlas, The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and International Astronaut Biobank, transcriptomics

The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and International Astronaut Biobank — Body-wide tissue stress map with cfRNA. a, Cell-type deconvolution using Bayes Prism with Tabula Sapiens as a reference. Top ten cell types by average fraction across all samples with all remaining cell types summed together as ‘other’. b, Cell type of origin for hepatocytes, endothelial cells, haematopoietic stem cells and melanocytes, which all show increased abundance during post-flight and recovery timepoints. c, Cell proportion changes in different layers of the skin from spatially resolved transcriptomics on skin biopsies. Predicted melanocyte abundance changes are significant in the inner epidermal and outer dermal skin compartments. In panels b and c, n = 4 independent participants across 7 timepoints. The centre of the boxplots represent the median, the box hinges encompass the first and third quartiles, and the whiskers extend to the smallest and largest values no further than 1.5 × IQR away from the hinges. NS, not significant; **P ≤ 0.01; ***P ≤ 0.001. — Nature via PubMed

Spaceflight induces molecular, cellular and physiological shifts in astronauts and poses myriad biomedical challenges to the human body, which are becoming increasingly relevant as more humans venture into space.

Yet current frameworks for aerospace medicine are nascent and lag far behind advancements in precision medicine on Earth, underscoring the need for rapid development of space medicine databases, tools and protocols.

Here we present the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), an integrated data and sample repository for clinical, cellular and multi-omic research profiles from a diverse range of missions, including the NASA Twins Study, JAXA CFE study, SpaceX Inspiration4 crew1, Axiom and Polaris.

The SOMA resource represents a more than tenfold increase in publicly available human space omics data, with matched samples available from the Cornell Aerospace Medicine Biobank. The Atlas includes extensive molecular and physiological profiles encompassing genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and microbiome datasets, which reveal some consistent features across missions, including cytokine shifts, telomere elongation and gene expression changes, as well as mission-specific molecular responses and links to orthologous, tissue-specific mouse datasets.

Leveraging the datasets, tools and resources in SOMA can help to accelerate precision aerospace medicine, bringing needed health monitoring, risk mitigation and countermeasure data for upcoming lunar, Mars and exploration-class missions.

The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and international astronaut biobank, Nature via PubMed (open access)

Astrobiology,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

Follow on Twitter