University of Lethbridge researchers collaborated with the Canadian Space Agency last month to prototype extraterrestrial biomanufacturing (ET-bio) — a concept that supports human space exploration and could also benefit Canadians living in remote areas on Earth.
Dr. Jessica Willi from the U of L’s Willi Lab was tasked with supplying biochemical reactions to the CSA for a launch Aug. 19 that sent two identical payloads into the stratosphere from a base in Timmins, ON.
“Biochemical reactions can be freeze-dried, sent to space, and programmed later to make anything encoded on DNA,” said Willi.
Included on those payloads were bioreagents prepared by the Willi Lab, including master’s student Roza Gabdullina and MITACS Globalink student Valeria Angulo Villa, who spent the summer assembling, freeze-drying, and testing bioreactions for ET-bio.
Willi explained researchers work on biotechnology, which is called cell-free reactions. “Basically, we take a bunch of bacterial cells, and we put them in a juicer. That way they’re not infectious anymore, but they still have the potential to produce proteins, such as insulin, vaccines, or enzymes.”
According to Willi, this is a very general-purpose technology for bioproduction.
“We took those samples and we freeze-dried them, just like you could freeze-dry a strawberry. Then we sent that juice into the stratosphere with the help of the CSA. And they sent us these samples back,” she noted.
One of the special things of that mission, Willi shared, is normally things get shot into space, and they just become space trash. “In this case, the CSA was able to retrieve our samples and sent them back to us, so we can analyze them in the lab.”
The freeze-dried reactions were exposed to the vacuum of space with extreme temperatures from the launch and the outer lack of atmosphere, and also to radiation.
“We were looking at how does that damage the biological potential of those reactions? And can they survive these temperatures and these conditions or are they going to be completely destroyed by them? That is what we’ll be analyzing over the next couple of weeks. This will tell us for the future if humanity can use this technology in order to colonize other areas of the solar system,” she said.
It also means that for remote communities in Canada that don’t have access to cold chains and biological samples all the time, “They could potentially use this technology to make their own medicines on-site,” she added.
Willi noted the students that worked on the project worked throughout the summer. “They’ve been getting a lot of hands-on experience working in the lab, but also working on a tight deadline. We had to get our samples ready in time. That was a great learning experience to work as a team towards a shared goal.”
“The project may sound sci-fi, but it builds real-world skills,” she added.
