Plants, DNA and Radiation: Astrobotany

+ 100 experiences in space botany/radiation. I also wrote a book for education K-12 in this field, actually in correction.

I used seeds from:

NASA LDEF/Long Duration Exposure Facility (in Space between 1984-1990): Tomatoes seeds.
NASA STS-86/Mir Station (in Space in 1997): Tomatoes seeds.
NASA Underwater seeds (1997): Tomatoes seeds.
NASA STS-121 mission/was a 2006 NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station flown by Space Shuttle Discovery (in Space between 2006-2007): Cinnamon Basil seeds.
Tomatosphere/Canadian Space Agency/International Space Station (in Space between 2014 and 2021): Tomatoes seeds transported by Blue Origin NS-13, SpaceX CRS-10 Dragon, etc.
Wisconsin Fast plants/Astroplants used in NASA Space Shuttle experiments: Mustard seeds.
Candidate crop for space flight (Hatch to ISS - PH-04 in 2021) sent by Jacob Torres, a NASA Engineer at the Kennedy Space Center/NASA Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) for the project "Space Chile Grow a Pepper Plant Challenge": Peppers seeds/Chimayo Chile seeds (soon). Research about antibacterial activity.
Irradiated seeds (50 Gy, 150 Gy, 500 GY): Radish seeds.
etc.

2020-2021

Lot of experiments and methodology copyright in progress.

NASA STS-121 mission (in Space between 2006-2007): Cinnamon Basil seeds.

I made a big mistake ... I soaked my seeds in a glass of water and I didn't realize that the seeds were going to have "mucilage" (a kind of gelatinous and transparent protection). So instead of drying and germinating, the seeds crystallized afterwards. It is through mistakes that we learn ;-)

2019

Reverse Aging & Ionized radiation: Regeneration of irradiated and dead cells - DNA modification and Radioprotection in Space.

First vegetal progeria from the asleep seeds of the NASA and LDEF (in space between 1984-1990) and bean seeds from 2019. This micro-research could help to understand the problem of cellular aging of astronauts and the consequences on their memory, their DNA, bone shrinkage for long-distance space flights like Mars and future malformations for the following generations (births on Mars for example).

I made some experiences with ionized radiation (50 Gy, 150 Gy and 500 Gy) on plants + tomatoes seeds from the LDEF (Long Duration Exposure Facility) with cosmic radiation/astroparticles radiation. I created the first chimera from a dormant seed, six years in orbit forty years ago, wake up her and grafted to a host bean seed in 2019. Results are very interesting (chromatography, ultra-violet lamp, colors, shape/three central veins instead of one, vegetal progeria etc). Imagine a human progeria and a child growing up but stunted and looking like an old man with three spinal column. It looks like it but at the vegetal level...

I deposed a copyright for these results.

Seeds from the LDEF (Long Duration Exposure Facility in Space between 1984-1990)

Instead of aging my plant was getting younger with the weeks...

2018

I like plants and seeds...When I was a child, in the French countryside, my grandfather took me to a seed farmer every year (90% of what I ate came from the vegetable garden ... or exchanges with neighbors like jams, eggs etc. In short, it was the good old days). Now I'm doing different experiments on the radiations that the seeds can undergo in three environments: Space radiation (my seeds have traveled aboard the International Space Station and have transported by SpaceX CRS-10 Dragon in 2017 + seeds from LDEF transported by Space Shuttle Challenger/1984 and Space Shuttle Columbia/1990), Ionized radiation* (50 Gy, 150 Gy and 500 Gy) , and pollution. Once my plants are germinated I will extract the DNA, make optical experiments and compare Data for my course in Data Science for Stanford university... I dream to be farmer on the planet Mars or Antarctica... ;-)

Next step I will learn to clone my plants...

*Ionized radiation is a radiation that carries enough energy to detach electrons from atoms or molecules, thereby ionizing them. Ionizing radiation is made up of energetic subatomic particles, ions or atoms moving at high speeds (usually greater than 1% of the speed of light) etc. Want to learn more? Wikipedia is your friend.

Day 10 - Slices preparation for microscope (seeds with radiation).

Normal. It looks more fragile, more small, but at microscope scale everything is in order.

With 500 Gy radiation. It looks more big, more strong, but at microscope scale some molecules are broken and DNA is modified.

Day 8 - Seeds from Space sprouted faster.

Day 8 - Normal seeds sprouted very well; seeds with dishwasher soap are died after sprouted; seeds with vinegar don't sprouted; seeds with bleach sprouted slowly.

Day 8 - Each seed sprouts at its own pace ...

Day 8 - Seeds with 500Gy are sprouted very fast and are very big in comparaison to the normal seeds...BUT the pigmentation is different and leafs have malformations for the moment...To follow...

Seeds with radiation: 50 Gy, 150 Gy, 500 Gy.

Polluting agents for plants (bleach, vinegar, salt, soap).

One of my son :-)

The images and the website are copyrighted and not free of rights.