Gerard Heyenga
Lynn
The next piece dealt with a presentation form the mid 90s. They wanted
to look at flying forest products in space. They wanted to look at the
role of gravity in the function of plants. Gerard Heyenga received his
masters from Trinity college in Ireland and his Ph.D. from Nottingham
in Britain. Gerard's model is a knowledge product.
Gerard Heyenga
I'm going to talk about how this work affects the world of agriculture.
The compound lignin is the second largest amount of plant product that
exist. But lignin cannot be broken down quickly. It's made up of three
polymers. Our interest is in removing the gravity to see how lignin reacts.
This process does not occur in microgravity. The next step is to see how
we can control the lignin production in plants.
Lignin is very strong and it is involved in the production of paper. If we can reduce lignin production by 5% then it can have huge benefits for society. We could also increase the production of lignin in the tree to make harder woods for building. And we could make other compounds for pharmaceutical uses. So if you down-regulate the lignin production, you increase the production of your drug and that's a major market.
In brief, there is a huge commercial opportunity. And I will talk about the problem, the challenges, and the possible solutions. We know that plants have a sensitivity to gravity and that there is a lignin gravity link. If trees have extra lignin then they can withstand being blown down. The problem is that trees are graded on "reaction wood." SEM images show that reaction wood can be a real problem, timber dries out quicker and cracks. By reducing the lignin that can help the lumber industry.
Normal wood cells are different from reaction wood cells. Reaction wood can affect the wood aversely from a timber industry standpoint. Lignin metabolism can be a problem. The biosynthesis to make these compounds lead to where are the enzymes being produced to form the polymers. I don't believe we've got very far yet in our research. The reaction wood occurs only in certain cells. Lignin is solid and hard. If you can use lignin to make tissue in human cells you could make stronger wound treatments.
There's a subtlety involved. By removing gravity you can down-regulate the entire process, specifically the lignin involved in the structural strength of the plant and that's important. It will not affect the integrity of the plant.
The point is that we are addressing this because five years ago we couldn't have addressed any of this. I could never have dreamed of doing genomic analysis five years ago. One of the requirements is tracking genomic analysis. If we have control over this we can have commercial opportunities in the timber and pharmaceutical industries.
How can we do this? We need microgravity, and the best
place to do this is in space. We need 40 or 80 days of in-flight time
and we cannot do that with the shuttle. In terms of capability we need
chamber environments. We need access to space and good conditions and
that's where the chamber environment comes in -- we have control over
chamber environments. One of the problems is controlling carbon dioxide.
We need a fully autonomous closed system. We need total control and understanding
of the environment. Then the variations of the environment have to be
managed, we have a long way to go to address all of these things.
The plant growth has been addressed and solved from the standpoint of where we were eight years ago. Plant cultivation in space requires us to be absolute about it. It can be done and has been done, we just need to do more work.
Pine growth has shown promise too. Many different species are being studied and show great potential in space. During our 16 day study there was a significant growth in needles.
In space there are many obstacles. Time is the biggest. Then handling the material itself in space is very difficult. So we've done a lot of work on chemical stabilization.
Genomic analysis has shown that expression in space is very intense compared to on earth. We're still working on developing a better chip for our studies. There are an entire range of genes that we do not know what they do. So we need to do more work. A point of caution is in properly analyzing the genes. Comparing the four against the seven in the genomic analysis is surprising in the results.
PCM or plant cultivation module was another study. The MOBIAS plant cultivation module is specifically designed to support the vegetative growth phase of Arabidopsis
The other issue is acting on the genomic analysis. A lot of work has been done on having a better understanding of the cell wall structure analysis. This is a technology we need to achieve dynamic results. Tissue imaging and X-ray Microtomography is very important for the analysis of cells. This has been very useful in our work.
Is this going to work? We're looking at reaction wood on earth and in space and you don't get the reaction wood. The down-regulation looks as if we're heading in the right direction in our experiments.
The project plan is about how can we commercialize this? Well we need to get the information out. The orchestration of genes and genetic code is worth money. It's worth trillions of dollar, but how do you protect the intellectual property? You need to attract companies and say how good this is, but you can't give away information. Four years ago a consortium of the world's largest timber companies was brought together and they're looking at this initially. This is worth a lot to the world, we can reduce pollution and perhaps develop new drugs.
Questions
We've protected information by not saying anything. If you go to the patent office then you alert companies to what you are doing. We've held off on that.
What are your data throughput requirements?
Imaging only once or twice a day.
How big is the target vehicle?
The point is that the target vehicle platform should be small. Roughly it's about 4.5 inches long and 2 inches tall and about 3 inches wide. I think it's about 800 grams. It's very small.