Mustard on the moon?

NASA scientists are suggesting that before sending humans back to the moon, we should launch plants there and watch them grow.

Dr. Chris McKay, my former astrobiology mentor at NASA, and plant biologist Dr. Robert Ferl of the University of Florida, presented their plan at a meeting of lunar scientists at NASA Ames this week.

The idea is simple: Fly a simple plant habitat to the moon. Bring along seeds (you don't have to care for them or feed them on the launch pad or the flight out). Germinate them inside your lunar plant-growth module on the surface and see how they cope with the low gravity, temperature and pressure as well as the high radiation by monitoring their gene expression. You can even go a step further and add lunar soil to the chamber to monitor the toxicity of the soil or the content of the soil.

Like the white mouse is for mammals, Arabidopsis thaliana (a member of the Mustard family) is the model organism for plants. It can go from seed to seed in six weeks, has a small, fully sequenced genome, can live under low-powered LED light, and has simple techniques for introducing fluorescent marker proteins into its genome. This allows the plant to be used as a highly sensitive bio-marker (indicator) for radiation damage or other stresses.

You simply attach a Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) to a protein known to be produced in response to a given condition or stress. Then when you look at the plant under 488 nm light (blue light) you can see if it is glowing. A green glow indicates where the tagged bio-marker protein is being expressed.

In addition to being GFP-markable, Arabidopsis has been shown to be able to grow at 10 kPa, or one-tenth of Earth's sea-level atmospheric pressure and closer to Martian pressure. Arabidopsis seeds can also be sterilized before launch to be compliant with planetary protection measures designed to insure that Earth microbes don't hitch a ride to space and interfere with future search for life efforts.

Scientists swap moon, Mars exploration plans [SF Chronicle]

Plants in long term lunar exploration [NASA Lunar Science Institute]

See Also:

Image courtesy of Paragon Space Development Corp. of Arabidopsis growing on Mars