Human cells with fluorescently labeled chromatin (green) and microtubules (magenta) appear elongated after 24-hour exposure to flows.
Yet, while the physical rules behind the genome’s organization remain an active area of research, many questions are still largely unanswered. Among these is the impact of an omnipresent force influencing life on Earth: gravity.
A new study, which appears in the journal Science Advances, addresses some of these weighty questions by using an innovative technique: creating a zero-gravity, or microgravity, environment in order to reveal gravity’s impact on a human cell.
The method serves two purposes: isolating gravity’s impact on the genome by removing it as a factor in experiments while, at the same time, showing how the genome functions in outer space, where gravity is nonexistent.
“On Earth, the role of gravity is intriguing—it is a constant mechanical stress on everything,” explains Alexandra Zidovska, an associate professor in New York University’s Department of Physics, who led the study. “We wanted to know what gravity’s role is in the genome’s organization and function here on Earth. To uncover it, you have to remove gravity as a force so we simulated zero gravity in our experiments.”
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