OMICS IN SPACE – Interview with Professor Afshin Beheshti on Translating Proteomics

In this episode of Translating Proteomics, host Parag Mallick chats with Professor Afshin Beheshti who is a Professor of Surgery, Director of the Center for Space Biomedicine, and Associate Director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition, Professor Beheshti has a visiting researcher appointment at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and is president of two non-profits – the COVID-19 International Research Team and Kwaai. The latter aims to democratize access to artificial intelligence through the design, construction, and maintenance of a free personal AI called Kwaai.

Professor Beheshti’s research covers a range of topics focused on how circulating mirco RNAs and mitochondria impact health, but this conversation focuses primarily on Professor Beheshti’s work advancing our understanding of how spaceflight impacts biology. We cover:

• How research on spaceflight and biology is done
• Gaps that remain in our understanding of spaceflight and biology
• Omics studies of spaceflight and biology
• How studying spaceflight and biology enhances our understanding of human health more broadly

Find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Chapters

00:00 – Intro

01:10 – How Professor Beheshti got interested in research at the intersection of spaceflight and biology

4:34 – Biological challenges humans face in spaceflight

8:41 – Frailty and “aging” in space

17:44 – How do you measure immune function in space?

22:11 – Timescales of physiological changes due to spaceflight

27:29 – How do multiomic approaches help us understand biology in space?

35:47 – How does studying biology in space help us understand health on Earth?

42:56 – What model systems do we have to study spaceflight biology?

45:48 – What gaps remain in our ability to study and measure biology in space?

47:27 – What do you do in you work with Kwaai?

50:30 – Outro

Resources

• Trivedi Institute for Space and Global Biomedicine
  • New Institute at the University of Pittsburgh focused on “advancing human health through space-driven innovation”
• NASA Open Science Data Repository
  • “Provides open access to biological and physical science datasets from spaceflight and ground studies, enabling data reuse for discovery and innovation.”
• Camera et al., 2024. Agining and putative frailty biomarkers are altered by spaceflight
  • Study on molecular biomarkers and frailty phenotypes in space
• Overbey et al., 2024. The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and international astronaut biobank
  • An “integrated data and sample repository for clinical, cellular, and multi-omic research profiles” from a variety of space missions
  • Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) website
• Corti et al., 2024. To boldly go where no microRNAs have gone before: spaceflight impact on risk for small-for-gestational-age infants
  • Explores how miRNA signatures of “small-for-gestational-age” are impacted by the space environment
• Beheshti et al., 2013. Age and space irradiation modulate tumor progression: implications for carcinogenesis risk
  • Some of Professor Beheshti’s early work studying connections between spaceflight and cancer progression.
• Kwaai
  • Nonprofit “building a non-cost open source Personal AI assistant”