Flight-Scope: microscopy with microfluidics in microgravity

Abstract

With the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA working to return humans to the moon and onwards to Mars, it has never been more important to study the impact of altered gravity conditions on biological organisms. These include astronauts but also useful micro-organisms they may bring with them to produce food, medicine, and other useful compounds by synthetic biology. Parabolic flights are one of the most accessible microgravity research platforms but present their own challenges: relatively short periods of altered gravity ([~]20s) and aircraft vibration. Live-imaging is necessary in these altered-gravity conditions to readout any real-time phenotypes. Here we present Flight-Scope, a new microscopy and microfluidics platform to study dynamic cellular processes during the short, altered gravity periods on parabolic flights. We demonstrated Flight-Scopes capability by performing live and dynamic imaging of fluorescent glucose uptake by yeast, S. cerevisiae, on board an ESA parabolic flight. Flight-Scope operated well in this challenging environment, opening the way for future microgravity experiments on biological organisms.