Evaluating the effect of spaceflight on the host–pathogen interaction between human intestinal epithelial cells and Salmonella Typhimurium
Jennifer Barrila, Shameema Sarker, Nicole Hansmeier, Shanshan Yang, Kristina Buss, Natalia Briones, Jin Park, Richard R. Davis, Rebecca J. Forsyth, C. Mark Ott, Kevin Sato, Cristine Kosnik, Anthony Yang, Cheryl Shimoda, Nicole Rayl, Diana Ly, Aaron Landenberger, Stephanie D. Wilson, Naoko Yamazaki, Jason C. Steel, Camila Montano, Rolf U. Halden, Tom Cannon, Sarah L. Castro-Wallace, Cheryl A. Nickerson
Abstract
Spaceflight uniquely alters the physiology of both human cells and microbial pathogens, stimulating cellular and molecular changes directly relevant to infectious disease. However, the influence of this environment on host-pathogen interactions remains poorly understood. Here we report our results from the STL-IMMUNE study flown aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-131, which investigated multi-omic responses (transcriptomic, proteomic) of human intestinal epithelial cells to infection with Salmonella Typhimurium when both host and pathogen were simultaneously exposed to spaceflight. To our knowledge, this was the first in-flight infection and dual RNA-seq analysis using human cells.