September 5, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode of Cultivating Curiosity, host Taylor Clem speaks with Dr. Wagner Vendramé, a professor at the University of Florida, about his groundbreaking research on how plants adapt to microgravity in space. The conversation covers Dr. Vendramé's journey into space research, the impact of microgravity on plant cells, current experiments involving seeds sent to the International Space Station, and the role of cryopreservation in preserving plant material. The discussion also highlights the potential implications of this research for agriculture on Earth and the future of space-based plant science.
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(00:10):
Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, the podcast where we
dig into the fascinating world of plants and the science that
shapes our lives. We usually keep ourselves
grounded in the conversations, but today we're heading about
250 miles up to the International Space Station
where researchers are uncoveringhow seas respond to unique
environment space. So today, our guest is Doctor
(00:33):
Wagner Vendrame. He's a professor in ornamental
and micro propagation and cryopreservation from the
University of Florida and has been sending plant experiments
beyond Earth to learn how they adapt and what those lessons can
teach us. Growing stronger, more Brazilian
crops and new plants back home. So Doctor Vendrame, I am excited
(00:53):
to have you here. Your research like really piques
my interest because, you know, we start thinking about
International Space Station space, working in the world of
science and STEM. I mean, it's, it's a really
great conversation. So thank you for coming.
I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule.
Morning, Taylor. Thanks for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here with you and your audience.
(01:16):
Yeah, absolutely. We always want to know a little
bit about, you know, the you yourself as a researcher.
And because we've learned that alot of the stories that we get
from our guest on this show, youknow, their story on how they
ended up in this field that they're working in and the
research they're on is actually really, it is really interesting
to hear. So can you tell us a little bit
of like about yourself and how you ended up doing this research
(01:40):
that you're currently working on?
Sure. I'm originally from Brazil, and
I came to the US to do a master's at the Universe of
Georgia, and that led me to a PhD at the Universal of Georgia
and soon after a postdoc at the Universal of Georgia.
And it was right there when I was doing my postdoc that I got
(02:03):
interested in Space Research andwe had the series called Plant
Biotechnology Journal Club. So I prepare a presentation on
the potential of using space forresearch with plants.
And, and that was kind of interesting because I remember
the professor leading the discussion, he laughed about it
(02:24):
and he said, oh, you know, imagine that we're going to be
sending plants to space. That's kind of far fetched and
I'm like OK, you know, but as wejoke and say, OK, hold my beer.
So from there, of course, in 2001 I was hired by the
University of Florida. My my focus on research has been
(02:46):
micro propagation of horticultural crops, mostly
ornamentals, but I have worked with medicinals and food crops
as well. And cryopreservation is another
technique that we use to preserve material for a long
term storage like seeds, pollen and and even in vitro tissues.
Wow, so. I, I think that's really
(03:09):
fascinating because how you end up getting here and starting
this research. I like that.
Had that moment where, you know,someone kind of just scoffed or
laughed at the idea and then like, here you are, you know,
you've been with the university now for almost 25 years, which
is fantastic. Yeah, that's correct.
And he was in 2007 when I was contacted by a gentleman.
(03:31):
And that's another interesting story.
I received this phone call and the gentleman identify himself
as John Wayne Kennedy. And yes.
And at first I thought, OK, thisis a joke or, you know,
something. No, seriously, that's his name,
John Wayne Kennedy. And he was retired from the
(03:51):
USDA. And he said, hey, you know, I've
been looking for someone who works with plant cells, plant
cell cultures, and your name keeps popping up.
And I'm. So really.
I said, yeah. I said, OK, I want to talk to
you about a potential experimentin space, but I need you to sign
an NDA, non disclosure agreement.
(04:12):
So at the time this was 2007, hesent me a fax.
I signed the documents sent backand it was already end of the
day. I was driving home when I
receive a call on my cell phone and he said, hey, Wagner, thanks
for signing the NDA and I'm going to put you here on on a
meeting with a couple people. And all of a sudden he started
(04:33):
introduce me to an executive from Boeing, another the
administrator for NASA, Mark Uran and a few other people.
And all of a sudden I felt like,wow, what did I get into?
And and the idea was to that first experiment, it was not
actually an experiment. It was a proof of concept is to
(04:56):
show how plant cells develop andgrew in space as compared to
Earth. So it was in August 2007 when we
send our first little box to space to look at the how the
cells would develop and grow andlook at cell structure and
things like that. Oh, that's fantastic.
(05:18):
So you know, through through this initial research that
you've been doing, it's kind of how you created this this bridge
and you ended up having someone reach out to you.
And then that's kind of how thisrelationship ended up building
essentially with your initial research with with NASA or at
least doing research in space. Prior to that conversation, were
(05:39):
you doing any research in space or is it just kind of like the
idea of like this is? I would like to do yes.
Exactly. It was just an idea.
You know, I kept that in the back of my mind and, and, and I
was really, I was excited to be in Florida because the Kennedy
Space Center is here. And I always wonder and if I
will have an opportunity to do any research that will be space
(06:01):
related. And there you go.
You know, I had the first opportunity and soon after I was
working with a plant that is called, the scientific name is
jatrophicurcas. Yeah.
And that plant has a tremendous potential for biofuel
production. It's been proven that the you
can extract the oil and the oil can be used for a bio diesel,
(06:23):
but also for bio jet fuel. And in fact, Boeing had them
study that. They didn't publish, but I was
able to get that information from Boeing directly.
And they compare the Jet A and and Jet A1, which are jet fuels
with oil from Jatropha in some commercial airlines.
(06:45):
And they either met or surpass the specifications for fuels.
Yeah, because. Jatropha I know is a plant that
can like It germinates really quickly.
It can grow rather quickly. Oh, that's that's really cool.
So what what did you learn from that research?
Because I know this is research that you've done in the past.
And yes, yeah. Yeah.
But, well, we spend several years doing, you know, studies
(07:08):
in the field, looking at the plant for the capability.
And that's when NASA got really interested because they thought,
oh, this will be a perfect modelplant for us to do some studies
in space. So we were cloning this plant in
the lab using some cell cultures, and we decided to send
those cell cultures to space andsee how they will behave.
(07:30):
So that led us to 4 Space Flightexperiments between 2010, 2011.
The last one was with the space shuttle Atlantis, the very last
space shuttle. And so three of them went to the
Space Station National Laboratory, but the last one,
because it was the last shuttle,it stayed with the shadow for 14
(07:52):
days and then it came back. But they gave us a lot of data
to look at it and understand what was going on with the plant
cells in space. And one thing that we discovered
that was quite interesting is that not only the plants
themselves, but the plant cells,they react to the environmental
(08:13):
microgravity as a stress environment.
And by doing that, they start turning certain genes on and
certain genes off. It's like the plant is flipping
switches, trying to find a balance, right, and to adapt to
that stress. And we thought this is quite
fascinating. And other researchers, Dr. Rob
(08:36):
Furrow and Elisa Paul from UF, had done similar experiments
with Arabidopsis. So we already had some
preliminary information that we were able to use to build this
experiment. And and what we saw is that a
lot of the the genes that were turned on or we called, they
were up regulated, they related to stress response genes.
(09:00):
So it's like the plant is producing this extra proteins to
protect them from those stresses.
So that was an interesting discovery.
Well, what you know, in that situation I really like because,
you know, even when people are growing plants like within
hydroponic systems, they're using lights.
And I know that like we can use lights as a way to manipulate
(09:23):
genetic expression potentially. So in this case, the
microgravity is essentially becoming an opportunity that's
essentially kicking on the stress response of the plants
that you have in those conditions.
Is that are you seeing that the case with all the plants that
you have sent up in the researchthat you've done?
(09:44):
Well, we, we just work with Jatropha at that point.
So and because we had some preliminary data from Doctor
Farrell's and Doctor Analisa Paul's research, so he just
confirmed what they had found. So our premises and that's how
our hypothesis is that microgravity induces what we
(10:07):
call differential gene expression that mean the
expression of genes in a different pattern.
So again with genes that are either up regulated or down
regulated and with the current study, so we send several seeds
to the International Space Station and the idea is the OR
(10:27):
the hypothesis is that microgravity will affect the
Physiology of those seeds and and maybe the the gene
expression within the seeds. Yeah.
So let's go and let's talk a little bit about the research
that you are doing currently, because as we're recording this,
just a couple weeks ago, some ofyour research went up on the
(10:50):
SpaceX rocket and it's currentlyat the International Space
Station. And you're doing research on
what are the type of seeds that you have up there.
And you mentioned your genetic expressions, but what are you
looking at with that research specifically, right, just.
To clarify that actually the experiment was launched on
August 1st, but the seeds already return.
(11:12):
They splashed down on August 9. Oh, OK.
Yeah. So they stayed one week at the
International Space Station National Laboratory and we
selected, we tried to do a representation of different seed
material. It was quite a quick request to
get this experiment in in place.So we selected a variety of Baye
(11:34):
gras, which is a forage crop, and another variety of
strawberry. Both of those variets were
developed by the Universal Florida, the Bayeagras by Doctor
Kevin Kenworthy and strawberry by Doctor Vance Whitaker.
(11:55):
And, and they were, you know, very nice to share those seeds
with us for the Space Flight experiments.
And then we selected 2 Florida native orchids.
I do a lot of work with native orchids and we had those seeds
available. One is called epidendral
nocturnal is the night fragrant orchid, and the other one is a
(12:16):
very tiny orchid called Dendrophilics proactus, also
called the Jingle Bell orchid. And so we thought it would be
nice to have, you know, these orchids because they're native
to Florida, so they're representative to the state and
the other two varieties of varieties released by the
Universal Florida, we thought they would have some value.
(12:38):
So right now they came back, they they are still at the
University of Colorado. Well, not the University of
Colorado, I'm sorry. They are at the Jaguar Space,
which is a company in Colorado. They are located in Boulder.
And the CEO came from the University of Colorado and he
was Jaguar Space, was our implementation partner.
(13:00):
And implementation partner is a company that usually help us
with the pre and post fly logistics.
And they also provided all the hardware for the flight as well
as getting the permits authorizations for us to use the
laboratories at the Kennett Space Center.
Oh great. So they're kind of like the the
(13:20):
media area between the research,the work that you all have been
doing and helping ensure that you're successful in getting
your research essentially permitted to go to the
International Space Station and then get home.
So they kind of help make sure that you can accomplish that
task. Yes, I mean this is fantastic.
When we had our first flights between 2000 and seven, 2011, we
(13:44):
worked with Biosurf, which is also a company out of the
Aerospace Engineering departmentat the Universal Colorado.
And the CEO, the current CEO forJaguar Space used to work for
Bioserv. So he left Bioserv and created
Jaguar Space and by coincidence I was put in touch with him and
(14:05):
and when we connected, we realized we already knew each
other. So and this is also was a
collaboration through Imbrapa inBrazil.
We have a memorandum of understanding with Imbrapa.
Embrapa is equivalent to the USDA here in in the United
States. So they do a lot of research and
(14:25):
they connected with me because they knew I had done some
microgravity work. And they wanna, they started a
pro, a program in Brazil called Space Farming, which is under
the umbrella of their tennis project, which is to return to
the moon, establish a station inthe moon.
And through Imbrapa and connection with Jaguar Space, we
(14:45):
were able to put together this experiment.
So it was an interesting connection and a lot of
coincidence. Yeah.
So I I'm now thinking as we're talking about this like actual
methodology, the experimentation, you have your
treatment in your control groups, your treatment group
essentially is what you're sending to space.
What what does that look like? Is it kind of like it's stored
(15:08):
within the cargo of the rocket? How does that research look like
once it's up at the International Space Station?
Yeah, I give an idea. Let me grab something.
So this little tube here, these are called FPAS, fluid
processing apparatus. I have used this before in
previous flights and we have an array of a tubes in a cylinder
(15:30):
called GAP, which are group activation packs, the seeds.
This is a passive experiment. So in space, nothing was done to
them. They were just exposed to
microgravity. So in this tube, we're able to
put layers of seeds separated bya rubber, you know, septum, and
then they are all accommodated in this gap cylinder.
(15:55):
And then they were sent to space.
Once they arrived, the astronauts took them out of the
capsule and transferred them to the International Space Station,
National Laboratory and, and they just stayed there.
Nothing was done to them. And meanwhile, we had the same
cylinder with the same seeds in the ground for comparison.
(16:17):
And, and it was actually a collaboration among several
countries. So we had seeds from Argentina,
Guatemala, India, the Maldivas, Nigeria.
So the idea was through Jaguar Space, they had this initiative
to send seeds from the world to space and to see how
(16:42):
microgravity would affect them. But also thinking about long
term missions, right? If you if you ever want to go
back to Mars or establish a station in the Moon, it will be
important to to understand how adifferent food crops or even
other crops behaves. So that that reminds me, so have
you heard of the tomatoes for your project?
(17:04):
I'm not sure. So it's, it's a project that we
do in our office with our 4H youth where I think it's with
the Canadian Space Agency where they actually send tomato seeds
to space and they expose them, I'm assuming very similar
methodology that you're discussing.
And they send us actually samples of we don't know which
(17:28):
one, it's blind. So we have a treatment and a
control and we actually set it up and the kid, we germinate
tomato seeds, we call it the Space Tomatoes project.
And then the youth are kind of, you know, they're making
hypotheses on if they're going to grow the same, if they're
going to grow different and they're and then they're
measuring germination rates throughout the research.
(17:49):
And we just amended off to the that I guess that's the Canadian
Space Agency. I can't remember the other
partner with that. And then later on they'll tell
us which one was the treatment, which one was a control just so
we can look and kind of like, Ohyeah, that we did see or we
didn't. We have.
We've never seen a difference, but.
But that that's great, especially involving kids,
(18:12):
because I feel like if you can instigate, you know, into kids
minds, you know, the potential of doing this type of research,
that's amazing. You know, that's one of the, the
big things in the United States.You know, we're innovative and,
and, you know, putting that in the, in the kids minds, I think
is very valuable. We we actually intend to do
(18:34):
something similar to get those seeds back.
We're going to germinate them, we're going to grow them
initially just a visual check, see if they look any different.
But we're going a little more indepth.
So with a colleague of mine, Doctor Hector Paris is a seed
seed physiologist, so he's goingto help us with some seed
(18:56):
Physiology studies. So we're going to look at the
seed respiration. You also have, he has a very
neat machine, which is a spectral imaging device that he
can, you know, take shots of theseeds and look inside them and
see if they're viable or not. We're gonna do viability tests
and our colleagues in Brazil aregoing to do some of the
(19:18):
molecular work and look at the DNA and gene expression.
And in my lab, we're also gonna germinate them in vitro and, and
maybe try to multiply them because we're gonna have the
seeds that would germinate that were exposed to microgravity.
So we can actually take pieces of that little plantlet and
(19:39):
clone them. And we could have multiples of
that same plant and see if that kind of gene expression remains
within the clones. From from your understanding of
knowledge that you already have,what do you kind of hypothesize
would come a result when you do this in vitro or this like
(20:00):
tissue culture propagation of the seeds that have been
exposed, Do you think there's going to be residual effect of
that genetic expression? That that's our hypothesis that
the some of the genes that were differentially expressed, that
that will become permanent and maybe others will revert back
(20:20):
because once the the seeds are back, they sense that oh, OK,
we're back, no need to have those genes.
But some of those differential expression actually may be
permanent. And the implication for that
could be, remember, since the genes that were differentially
expressed had to do with a stress response and making the
(20:40):
plant more tolerant to those stresses.
So what if those plants could now be tolerant to environmental
stresses back on Earth like drought, heat, among others.
So this these are some of our hypothesis.
So by looking at how they grow, if they look any different and
(21:02):
at the same time if they're moreresilient to those environmental
stresses, that will give us likeinteresting response.
And then the idea is to publish the data.
And you know, and in that case, which is interesting is that
we're thinking about using microgravity because some people
may think, well, what's the point of spending all this money
(21:24):
sending seeds to space, right? But again, as I mentioned, if we
understand how seeds adapt to the stress of microgravity and
they continue growing and they're still normal and doing
well, that will be a win for, again, long term missions.
Because going to Mars, we're thinking astronauts, you know,
(21:47):
they probably would love to havea diversity of food, material to
eat and in terms of diversity and quality and food that
provides good nutrition. So that is very important for
long term missions. But knowing that those plants
now adapted to microgravity and we can bring them back to Earth,
(22:10):
maybe that can help agriculture in face of those, you know,
extreme environmental stresses. Yeah.
So I'm, I'm now imagining, you know, is like how going through
this research is allowing us to have this controlled, this
(22:30):
controlled stress, this microgravity.
And then we can kind of extrapolate that a little bit
further. It's like, OK, if we have these
stress induced plants, how can we then potentially take this to
create more resilient crops thatmore resilient to, you know,
changing weather, changing pest disease, etcetera.
(22:53):
So you have the ability to better understand, I guess, that
differential expression, a genetic expression by having
this stress induced plants and then trying to see what you can
do with it afterwards. That's, that's really
fascinating is does the stressorfrom the perspective of like the
plant, does the stressor matter like so like microgravity
(23:17):
compared to something like a drought stress response?
Are you seeing like does that stressor matter to that to
plants? I would think so because these
are different type of stresses, right?
But it's to the plant responds in a similar manner.
But for example, microgravity may be affect the genetic
(23:41):
mechanism within the plant, but the plant is to has proper water
light to grow a proper substrate.
So there's they're not really extreme effects of heat or
drought back on Earth. Drought, for example, means, you
know, lack of water. So that's more extreme.
(24:02):
The plant may have some tolerance to that once those
genes are expressed, but to a certain extent of course,
because if it is a prolonged drought period, most likely the
plant may not survive the same for heat and other environmental
stresses. But at least it give us like a
(24:23):
clue that you know this kind of changes in weather patterns.
If the plant cannot at least adapt to short periods of those
changes through this differential expression, that
could be something positive likeagain can help growers and
farmers in in the face of these changes.
(24:43):
Great. Yeah, I love that idea.
Just overall is not only thinking about this really cool
long term type of expedition of,you know, going to Mars, but
we're also thinking about real world implications and impacts
on just here on Earth and agriculture production.
So I think find that actually incredibly fascinating and one
(25:06):
of your fields of research, I'm going to kind of pivot a little
bit has to do with cryopreservation.
How does cryopreservation come into play with this?
Because, you know, I'm a huge nerd.
You know, my phone case is Star Trek Deep Space 9.
So it's like, you know, so this whole thing fascinates me.
But usually when you hear the term cryopreservation, you think
(25:29):
of something that's, like, very science fiction, but it's not.
And you're actually doing this research.
And can you explain what this isand how it relates to this type
of research? Yeah.
Yeah, I like that analogy to science fiction because we've
seen most movies, like Aliens, for example, that people get,
you know, they got frozen for, Idon't know, 1000 years and then
(25:50):
all of a sudden when they reach a destination, they they fell
out and. Back to life.
Like how long was Ripley in cryopreservation?
Yeah, between the 1st and 2nd movie, but sorry.
So, so that's kind of interesting, but that yeah,
cryopreservation allow us to preserve material indefinitely
and, and with plants is way easier right then.
(26:11):
Although an interesting fact, when I started doing research
with cryopreservation, there wasa company, I think the name was
Alcoa, that for $100,000 they would cry preserve your body
once you die and then you know, in the hope that in the future
they could bring you back to life.
(26:33):
But the funniest thing is that they said if you think you know
$100,000 too much for $10,000 wewill cry.
Preserve your head. And that made me think of
Futurama. Futurama, yeah.
So, so, but going back to plantsis that I started doing research
with cryopreservation of seeds, especially orchids, while in the
(26:57):
past I had done some other type of cryopreservation with forest
species. But with seeds, the idea is that
seeds, they, they have a certainviability, right?
When you harvest the seeds, you can measure the embryo and see
if those seeds are viable. Over time, viability decreases.
So there are different ways of storing seeds.
(27:19):
Most people would just store them in the refrigerator and
then maintains a certain level of viability.
But it's too at viability decrease.
So cry preservation, you use some specific solutions that
protect the cells against ice crystals and and the the cells
(27:41):
itself, they're frozen, but they're not completely frozen.
So the the liquid inside the cells, the solutions, they
become almost like the Super cool gel.
It never freezes and that allowsthem to remain alive.
So we did experiments with several types of seeds of
orchids and orchids particularlybecause they're all considered
(28:04):
either in danger or threatened. So we thought will be a great
way to preserve those seeds indefinitely.
We also preserved cryopreserved pollen of orchids and we have
done cryopreservation of in vitro shoots of bananas and
again some forest species like sweet gum, yellow Poplar and
(28:27):
even pecan trees. So that's a good technique for
storing those seeds and how thatwill play into space.
I think pretty much is the fact that let's say we already know
that the seeds can grow in microgravity and you can grow
plants and you can eat them. But again, thinking about loss
(28:47):
of viability of the seeds, if you have a mechanism in the in
the rocket or in the space station like they have, if you
have a little cryo tank, you canpreserve those seeds for those
long term missions knowing that they will not lose viability.
So that could be 1 application of cryopreservation and all that
you need is a small container with liquid nitrogen and and
(29:11):
that's sufficient to preserve them.
So the process of cryopreservation for helping
maintain seed viability, so to kind of how do you get it to
that that state of cryopreservation?
Is it just through the use of liquid nitrogen?
No, we need to do some preparation of the seeds, so we
(29:34):
use a solution called pre vitrification solution.
Vitrification is the process of turning that solution of the
cell into a vitreous solution, but not a frozen solution.
So there's several publications,they use what they call pre
vitrification solution PVS and there are PVS one, PVS 2, PVS
(29:56):
three. We use mostly PVS 2 because it
works well. So we basically we test the
seeds in the solution to make sure that the solution is not
toxic to the seeds. Once we validate the the the
seeds survive the solution, thenwe test them in cryopreservation
in liquid nitrogen. Another thing that helps, we do
(30:20):
a pre cooling of those seats. We put them in ice for one hour,
2 hours or three hours just to start acclimating them to the
cold environment. And then we put them in little
vials with the solution and we put them in a in a container
inside a tank of liquid nitrogen.
So that's basically the process and and the premises that once
(30:43):
they are in liquid nitrogen, it doesn't matter if they are there
for one hour or one year or ten years that the plants remain in
a, let's say a state of suspended animation, right.
So they are there. If you need those seeds back,
you just take them out to do a quick thaw, like very quick in a
(31:03):
couple minutes in a warm water. Then you remove the solution,
clean the seeds and put them to germinate.
Wow. And and is what is interesting
is that let's say you measure the viability of a seed and you
say oh the seed has 80% viability.
In cryopreservation experiments you are expected to have at
(31:24):
least half of that to germinate after cryo event.
So let's say if it is 80% viability, you expect a 40%
germination after cryopreservation.
But through manipulation of those solutions and using some
additives, we're able, let's sayif we just use PVS two, we will
(31:45):
get to maybe 4550%, which is pretty good.
But by using some additives, we get close to the initial 80% so
we can maximize germination after cryo.
So that's this part of the experiments that we play with
and that's kind of interesting. So, yeah, so it is a good
(32:07):
technique. I'm really, I think that's like
really cool because you know, a few months ago, you know, one of
the guests we actually had on the on the podcast was doctor
actor Perez or talking about hiswork with seed conservation
biology. And you know, we talked about
seed banking and I definitely see it's like we have these seed
(32:29):
banks, but then all of a sudden if we're looking at ways because
I know they keep like the seed banks just like right, really
cold. But now we can think about how
cryopreservation has a role in this seed conservation, you
know, for like long term, not just transport through like long
term Space Flight, etcetera, butalso for, you know, just
(32:51):
conservation efforts, you know, different sustainable or
different food crops, etcetera. You know, the whole reason we do
a lot of that conservation. That's I That's fascinating.
Yeah. And, and in fact, that plays
into national security. And I explain why because we
just submitted a short proposal to DARPA, which is to the
(33:12):
creation of a cryo Bank of, you know, main crops, food crops for
the United States. Because again, with all the
changes in, you know, in, in environment and and weather, it
will be important to preserve this key crops a long term.
(33:33):
So in case of a catastrophe or something.
So that's one of our ideas to tap to develop a cryo seed, a
cryo Bank of seeds here at UF. And then the idea will have a
large tank with a unique liquid nitrogen tank that will feed
into the scryo tank. And you can preserve, I mean,
(33:57):
thousands or millions of thousands of seeds in that tank.
Wow. So if that ends up going
through, we might have a follow up episode where we do like a
broadcast live for whatever we can.
If it's not for related, you never know for security
purposes. Yeah, but I this is fascinating.
(34:18):
So I want, I want to ask becauseI feel like I can pick your
brain now forever. But what excites you the most
about, you know, the future of like space based plant science
and how it might end up having these big impacts of
horticulture on Earth and I don't want to say abroad, you
know, interstellar. Yeah, right.
(34:39):
Wow, this is all exciting, right?
So first of all, again, going back when I mentioned to you
there my post doc, that I was very fascinated by space.
But going even further back, I remember when I was a little
kid, I was maybe 4-5 years old when the man landed on the moon.
(35:00):
And, and I didn't understand much, but I remember everybody
glued to the TV and watching it live.
And I was like, wow. And I would always look at the
moon and think, man, the man wasthere.
You know, that's fascinating. So I carried that fascination
through all my life and and my career.
And I was fortunate enough to get these opportunities to fly
(35:22):
those experiments. So that to me is very exciting.
Just every time I walk into the Kennedy Space Center, you know,
and I'm able to get access is, is it just feels really amazing.
The one interesting piece of information when I had my first
Space Flight experiment I I was able to get to the VIP session
(35:43):
at the Kennett Space Center to watch the launch and I had my
camera pointed and everything all set up.
I could not take a picture because I was so nervous but
full of excitement that I decided let me just enjoy the
moment and forget about the photos.
I can copy photos from Naza later on and since then I've
(36:06):
been there and, you know, be able to photograph several
launches and and landings as well, which is quite an exciting
and this last experiment with sand about a month ago.
We actually Naza now is more restrictive with access.
But as I was sitting there at the it's called the Space
(36:30):
Science Processing Facility, I got a call from the press side
of NASA saying, hey, there's somebody here who wants to
interview you and we wonder if you could come here.
And I said, well, I don't think I have access.
So this nice lady from as I said, oh, come and pick you up.
I said, great. So once I got there, I had the
(36:52):
front view of the launchpad and,and that was amazing.
So I got a very nice photo that I'll be glad to share with you.
But it was really, it was exciting.
And, and again, every time you see that rocket going up and you
and you think, wow, there, my seats are there.
It's, it's like it's out of thisworld, right?
(37:14):
It's really, it blows your mind.So.
So that's very exciting. So in terms of future, I figure
it will be amazing if we will have more opportunities because
now as we get more data, we start building new ideas for
more experiments. And this is becoming a big deal
for UF and also for the world. For example, I mentioned
(37:37):
Embrapa. Embrapa is organizing the first
international symposium on spacefarming in October, and I'll be
there together with Doctor Farrell and Doctor and Eliza
Paul. So that's interesting.
And, and then we have the Astrayas Space Institute that
you have. And, and just recently I was
(38:00):
asked to sit on a task force to develop a curriculum on space
biology. So this this is all exciting
because we feel like, hey, we'regoing to have a, a program on
space biology Eduf that studentscan enroll in that program and
get a degree in space biology. So that's fascinating, right?
(38:24):
Oh wow, so it's not just research, but it's now becoming
it. It's a field.
It's a few, yeah. It's a big field.
And as you see, you know, we have launches almost every week
now. So it's becoming like mainstream
traveling to space. And you have Blue Origin, which
is the other side that they alsodo this short flights that Rob
(38:46):
Farrell was in one of them. Actually, we had the sort of an
experiment there where you remember the one that took Katy
Perry. Yeah, yeah.
That one carry seeds of chickpeaand in vitro plants of sweet
potato. The chickpea seeds came from
Brapa, Brazil and the sweet potato plants came from the
(39:11):
USDA. We wanted to send our own plants
from Brapa, but they they got stuck in quarantine.
So USDA was nice enough and say,hey, you need some plants, we
have some, take some of ours. So and why chickpea and sweet
potatoes again, we're thinking about plants that provide good
source of proteins, fiber and they have good taste.
(39:34):
And interestingly enough, last year I was in a workshop in
Brazil sponsored by Embrap and Brazilian Space Agency and they
talk about this two crops, chickpeas and sweet potatoes.
So they invited a chef who made Donuts where the dough were made
out of sweet potato. Potato flour.
(39:56):
And the filling was the cream made out of chickpeas, like a
hummus, but sweet. Sweet hummus.
And they were really good. So just to show the potential,
you know, using those crops. For they were they tasted out of
this world. Yes, bad pun.
Yes, that's all right. I that's fascinating.
(40:22):
I'm just imagining everyone was obsessed with like seeing like,
oh, Katy Perry's in Space, but it's actually research was
happening simultaneously. Yeah, of course.
You know, Katy Perry was more interesting for the public than
chick pieces. Fair enough, fair enough.
I I'm just imagining, you know, you being able to go back to
(40:43):
your yourself as a kid and like what you're what you would
think, what yourself as a kid would think.
Looking at you now in this cool research that you have been
doing, the research you have been helping lead lead in with
your teams, the partnerships. So I just want to absolutely
fascinating because the work that we've been doing from how
(41:07):
I'm understanding is we're just at the beginning and you know,
we're going to learn a lot, especially now that we're having
more investment in space scienceresearch.
So I, you know, I have to wrap us up, but sure, I want to thank
you so much for taking the time and sharing your stories with
(41:28):
us, sharing this research with us.
But I may, we may try to see if we can bring you back in the
future to kind of like what are some of the new things that
we're learning, you know, maybe with the institute, kind of
maybe like a round table or something like that.
Because like you mentioned, it'slike you're 1 member of this
bigger team. And it's just fascinating the
(41:50):
kind of that you're at the forefront of at this and as well
as the University of Florida. So thank you so much for joining
us today. And I look forward to hearing
more and reading more about the research that you've been doing.
Well, thank you, Taylor. It's been a pleasure talking to
you. This has been a fun conversation
and I'll be glad to come back anytime.
(42:11):
Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Vandrame, I
really appreciate it. That's it for today's journey
250 miles up. A big thank you to Doctor
Vandrame for sharing how space plant research is giving us new
ways to think about resiliency here on Earth.
From seeds and orbit to crops inour fields, these discoveries
remind us that innovation in themost unexpected places can help
(42:33):
us grow stronger, more adaptableplants for the future.
Thanks for joining us on Cultivating Curiosity.
If you enjoy this episode, be sure to subscribe and share it
with a fellow plant enthusiast. Until next time, keep growing
your curiosity.
Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, the podcast where we
dig into the fascinating world of plants and the science that
shapes our lives. We usually keep ourselves
grounded in the conversations, but today we're heading about
250 miles up to the International Space Station
where researchers are uncoveringhow seas respond to unique
environment space. So today, our guest is Doctor
(00:33):
Wagner Vendrame. He's a professor in ornamental
and micro propagation and cryopreservation from the
University of Florida and has been sending plant experiments
beyond Earth to learn how they adapt and what those lessons can
teach us. Growing stronger, more Brazilian
crops and new plants back home. So Doctor Vendrame, I am excited
(00:53):
to have you here. Your research like really piques
my interest because, you know, we start thinking about
International Space Station space, working in the world of
science and STEM. I mean, it's, it's a really
great conversation. So thank you for coming.
I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule.
Morning, Taylor. Thanks for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here with you and your audience.
(01:16):
Yeah, absolutely. We always want to know a little
bit about, you know, the you yourself as a researcher.
And because we've learned that alot of the stories that we get
from our guest on this show, youknow, their story on how they
ended up in this field that they're working in and the
research they're on is actually really, it is really interesting
to hear. So can you tell us a little bit
of like about yourself and how you ended up doing this research
(01:40):
that you're currently working on?
Sure. I'm originally from Brazil, and
I came to the US to do a master's at the Universe of
Georgia, and that led me to a PhD at the Universal of Georgia
and soon after a postdoc at the Universal of Georgia.
And it was right there when I was doing my postdoc that I got
(02:03):
interested in Space Research andwe had the series called Plant
Biotechnology Journal Club. So I prepare a presentation on
the potential of using space forresearch with plants.
And, and that was kind of interesting because I remember
the professor leading the discussion, he laughed about it
(02:24):
and he said, oh, you know, imagine that we're going to be
sending plants to space. That's kind of far fetched and
I'm like OK, you know, but as wejoke and say, OK, hold my beer.
So from there, of course, in 2001 I was hired by the
University of Florida. My my focus on research has been
(02:46):
micro propagation of horticultural crops, mostly
ornamentals, but I have worked with medicinals and food crops
as well. And cryopreservation is another
technique that we use to preserve material for a long
term storage like seeds, pollen and and even in vitro tissues.
Wow, so. I, I think that's really
(03:09):
fascinating because how you end up getting here and starting
this research. I like that.
Had that moment where, you know,someone kind of just scoffed or
laughed at the idea and then like, here you are, you know,
you've been with the university now for almost 25 years, which
is fantastic. Yeah, that's correct.
And he was in 2007 when I was contacted by a gentleman.
(03:31):
And that's another interesting story.
I received this phone call and the gentleman identify himself
as John Wayne Kennedy. And yes.
And at first I thought, OK, thisis a joke or, you know,
something. No, seriously, that's his name,
John Wayne Kennedy. And he was retired from the
(03:51):
USDA. And he said, hey, you know, I've
been looking for someone who works with plant cells, plant
cell cultures, and your name keeps popping up.
And I'm. So really.
I said, yeah. I said, OK, I want to talk to
you about a potential experimentin space, but I need you to sign
an NDA, non disclosure agreement.
(04:12):
So at the time this was 2007, hesent me a fax.
I signed the documents sent backand it was already end of the
day. I was driving home when I
receive a call on my cell phone and he said, hey, Wagner, thanks
for signing the NDA and I'm going to put you here on on a
meeting with a couple people. And all of a sudden he started
(04:33):
introduce me to an executive from Boeing, another the
administrator for NASA, Mark Uran and a few other people.
And all of a sudden I felt like,wow, what did I get into?
And and the idea was to that first experiment, it was not
actually an experiment. It was a proof of concept is to
(04:56):
show how plant cells develop andgrew in space as compared to
Earth. So it was in August 2007 when we
send our first little box to space to look at the how the
cells would develop and grow andlook at cell structure and
things like that. Oh, that's fantastic.
(05:18):
So you know, through through this initial research that
you've been doing, it's kind of how you created this this bridge
and you ended up having someone reach out to you.
And then that's kind of how thisrelationship ended up building
essentially with your initial research with with NASA or at
least doing research in space. Prior to that conversation, were
(05:39):
you doing any research in space or is it just kind of like the
idea of like this is? I would like to do yes.
Exactly. It was just an idea.
You know, I kept that in the back of my mind and, and, and I
was really, I was excited to be in Florida because the Kennedy
Space Center is here. And I always wonder and if I
will have an opportunity to do any research that will be space
(06:01):
related. And there you go.
You know, I had the first opportunity and soon after I was
working with a plant that is called, the scientific name is
jatrophicurcas. Yeah.
And that plant has a tremendous potential for biofuel
production. It's been proven that the you
can extract the oil and the oil can be used for a bio diesel,
(06:23):
but also for bio jet fuel. And in fact, Boeing had them
study that. They didn't publish, but I was
able to get that information from Boeing directly.
And they compare the Jet A and and Jet A1, which are jet fuels
with oil from Jatropha in some commercial airlines.
(06:45):
And they either met or surpass the specifications for fuels.
Yeah, because. Jatropha I know is a plant that
can like It germinates really quickly.
It can grow rather quickly. Oh, that's that's really cool.
So what what did you learn from that research?
Because I know this is research that you've done in the past.
And yes, yeah. Yeah.
But, well, we spend several years doing, you know, studies
(07:08):
in the field, looking at the plant for the capability.
And that's when NASA got really interested because they thought,
oh, this will be a perfect modelplant for us to do some studies
in space. So we were cloning this plant in
the lab using some cell cultures, and we decided to send
those cell cultures to space andsee how they will behave.
(07:30):
So that led us to 4 Space Flightexperiments between 2010, 2011.
The last one was with the space shuttle Atlantis, the very last
space shuttle. And so three of them went to the
Space Station National Laboratory, but the last one,
because it was the last shuttle,it stayed with the shadow for 14
(07:52):
days and then it came back. But they gave us a lot of data
to look at it and understand what was going on with the plant
cells in space. And one thing that we discovered
that was quite interesting is that not only the plants
themselves, but the plant cells,they react to the environmental
(08:13):
microgravity as a stress environment.
And by doing that, they start turning certain genes on and
certain genes off. It's like the plant is flipping
switches, trying to find a balance, right, and to adapt to
that stress. And we thought this is quite
fascinating. And other researchers, Dr. Rob
(08:36):
Furrow and Elisa Paul from UF, had done similar experiments
with Arabidopsis. So we already had some
preliminary information that we were able to use to build this
experiment. And and what we saw is that a
lot of the the genes that were turned on or we called, they
were up regulated, they related to stress response genes.
(09:00):
So it's like the plant is producing this extra proteins to
protect them from those stresses.
So that was an interesting discovery.
Well, what you know, in that situation I really like because,
you know, even when people are growing plants like within
hydroponic systems, they're using lights.
And I know that like we can use lights as a way to manipulate
(09:23):
genetic expression potentially. So in this case, the
microgravity is essentially becoming an opportunity that's
essentially kicking on the stress response of the plants
that you have in those conditions.
Is that are you seeing that the case with all the plants that
you have sent up in the researchthat you've done?
(09:44):
Well, we, we just work with Jatropha at that point.
So and because we had some preliminary data from Doctor
Farrell's and Doctor Analisa Paul's research, so he just
confirmed what they had found. So our premises and that's how
our hypothesis is that microgravity induces what we
(10:07):
call differential gene expression that mean the
expression of genes in a different pattern.
So again with genes that are either up regulated or down
regulated and with the current study, so we send several seeds
to the International Space Station and the idea is the OR
(10:27):
the hypothesis is that microgravity will affect the
Physiology of those seeds and and maybe the the gene
expression within the seeds. Yeah.
So let's go and let's talk a little bit about the research
that you are doing currently, because as we're recording this,
just a couple weeks ago, some ofyour research went up on the
(10:50):
SpaceX rocket and it's currentlyat the International Space
Station. And you're doing research on
what are the type of seeds that you have up there.
And you mentioned your genetic expressions, but what are you
looking at with that research specifically, right, just.
To clarify that actually the experiment was launched on
August 1st, but the seeds already return.
(11:12):
They splashed down on August 9. Oh, OK.
Yeah. So they stayed one week at the
International Space Station National Laboratory and we
selected, we tried to do a representation of different seed
material. It was quite a quick request to
get this experiment in in place.So we selected a variety of Baye
(11:34):
gras, which is a forage crop, and another variety of
strawberry. Both of those variets were
developed by the Universal Florida, the Bayeagras by Doctor
Kevin Kenworthy and strawberry by Doctor Vance Whitaker.
(11:55):
And, and they were, you know, very nice to share those seeds
with us for the Space Flight experiments.
And then we selected 2 Florida native orchids.
I do a lot of work with native orchids and we had those seeds
available. One is called epidendral
nocturnal is the night fragrant orchid, and the other one is a
(12:16):
very tiny orchid called Dendrophilics proactus, also
called the Jingle Bell orchid. And so we thought it would be
nice to have, you know, these orchids because they're native
to Florida, so they're representative to the state and
the other two varieties of varieties released by the
Universal Florida, we thought they would have some value.
(12:38):
So right now they came back, they they are still at the
University of Colorado. Well, not the University of
Colorado, I'm sorry. They are at the Jaguar Space,
which is a company in Colorado. They are located in Boulder.
And the CEO came from the University of Colorado and he
was Jaguar Space, was our implementation partner.
(13:00):
And implementation partner is a company that usually help us
with the pre and post fly logistics.
And they also provided all the hardware for the flight as well
as getting the permits authorizations for us to use the
laboratories at the Kennett Space Center.
Oh great. So they're kind of like the the
(13:20):
media area between the research,the work that you all have been
doing and helping ensure that you're successful in getting
your research essentially permitted to go to the
International Space Station and then get home.
So they kind of help make sure that you can accomplish that
task. Yes, I mean this is fantastic.
When we had our first flights between 2000 and seven, 2011, we
(13:44):
worked with Biosurf, which is also a company out of the
Aerospace Engineering departmentat the Universal Colorado.
And the CEO, the current CEO forJaguar Space used to work for
Bioserv. So he left Bioserv and created
Jaguar Space and by coincidence I was put in touch with him and
(14:05):
and when we connected, we realized we already knew each
other. So and this is also was a
collaboration through Imbrapa inBrazil.
We have a memorandum of understanding with Imbrapa.
Embrapa is equivalent to the USDA here in in the United
States. So they do a lot of research and
(14:25):
they connected with me because they knew I had done some
microgravity work. And they wanna, they started a
pro, a program in Brazil called Space Farming, which is under
the umbrella of their tennis project, which is to return to
the moon, establish a station inthe moon.
And through Imbrapa and connection with Jaguar Space, we
(14:45):
were able to put together this experiment.
So it was an interesting connection and a lot of
coincidence. Yeah.
So I I'm now thinking as we're talking about this like actual
methodology, the experimentation, you have your
treatment in your control groups, your treatment group
essentially is what you're sending to space.
What what does that look like? Is it kind of like it's stored
(15:08):
within the cargo of the rocket? How does that research look like
once it's up at the International Space Station?
Yeah, I give an idea. Let me grab something.
So this little tube here, these are called FPAS, fluid
processing apparatus. I have used this before in
previous flights and we have an array of a tubes in a cylinder
(15:30):
called GAP, which are group activation packs, the seeds.
This is a passive experiment. So in space, nothing was done to
them. They were just exposed to
microgravity. So in this tube, we're able to
put layers of seeds separated bya rubber, you know, septum, and
then they are all accommodated in this gap cylinder.
(15:55):
And then they were sent to space.
Once they arrived, the astronauts took them out of the
capsule and transferred them to the International Space Station,
National Laboratory and, and they just stayed there.
Nothing was done to them. And meanwhile, we had the same
cylinder with the same seeds in the ground for comparison.
(16:17):
And, and it was actually a collaboration among several
countries. So we had seeds from Argentina,
Guatemala, India, the Maldivas, Nigeria.
So the idea was through Jaguar Space, they had this initiative
to send seeds from the world to space and to see how
(16:42):
microgravity would affect them. But also thinking about long
term missions, right? If you if you ever want to go
back to Mars or establish a station in the Moon, it will be
important to to understand how adifferent food crops or even
other crops behaves. So that that reminds me, so have
you heard of the tomatoes for your project?
(17:04):
I'm not sure. So it's, it's a project that we
do in our office with our 4H youth where I think it's with
the Canadian Space Agency where they actually send tomato seeds
to space and they expose them, I'm assuming very similar
methodology that you're discussing.
And they send us actually samples of we don't know which
(17:28):
one, it's blind. So we have a treatment and a
control and we actually set it up and the kid, we germinate
tomato seeds, we call it the Space Tomatoes project.
And then the youth are kind of, you know, they're making
hypotheses on if they're going to grow the same, if they're
going to grow different and they're and then they're
measuring germination rates throughout the research.
(17:49):
And we just amended off to the that I guess that's the Canadian
Space Agency. I can't remember the other
partner with that. And then later on they'll tell
us which one was the treatment, which one was a control just so
we can look and kind of like, Ohyeah, that we did see or we
didn't. We have.
We've never seen a difference, but.
But that that's great, especially involving kids,
(18:12):
because I feel like if you can instigate, you know, into kids
minds, you know, the potential of doing this type of research,
that's amazing. You know, that's one of the, the
big things in the United States.You know, we're innovative and,
and, you know, putting that in the, in the kids minds, I think
is very valuable. We we actually intend to do
(18:34):
something similar to get those seeds back.
We're going to germinate them, we're going to grow them
initially just a visual check, see if they look any different.
But we're going a little more indepth.
So with a colleague of mine, Doctor Hector Paris is a seed
seed physiologist, so he's goingto help us with some seed
(18:56):
Physiology studies. So we're going to look at the
seed respiration. You also have, he has a very
neat machine, which is a spectral imaging device that he
can, you know, take shots of theseeds and look inside them and
see if they're viable or not. We're gonna do viability tests
and our colleagues in Brazil aregoing to do some of the
(19:18):
molecular work and look at the DNA and gene expression.
And in my lab, we're also gonna germinate them in vitro and, and
maybe try to multiply them because we're gonna have the
seeds that would germinate that were exposed to microgravity.
So we can actually take pieces of that little plantlet and
(19:39):
clone them. And we could have multiples of
that same plant and see if that kind of gene expression remains
within the clones. From from your understanding of
knowledge that you already have,what do you kind of hypothesize
would come a result when you do this in vitro or this like
(20:00):
tissue culture propagation of the seeds that have been
exposed, Do you think there's going to be residual effect of
that genetic expression? That that's our hypothesis that
the some of the genes that were differentially expressed, that
that will become permanent and maybe others will revert back
(20:20):
because once the the seeds are back, they sense that oh, OK,
we're back, no need to have those genes.
But some of those differential expression actually may be
permanent. And the implication for that
could be, remember, since the genes that were differentially
expressed had to do with a stress response and making the
(20:40):
plant more tolerant to those stresses.
So what if those plants could now be tolerant to environmental
stresses back on Earth like drought, heat, among others.
So this these are some of our hypothesis.
So by looking at how they grow, if they look any different and
(21:02):
at the same time if they're moreresilient to those environmental
stresses, that will give us likeinteresting response.
And then the idea is to publish the data.
And you know, and in that case, which is interesting is that
we're thinking about using microgravity because some people
may think, well, what's the point of spending all this money
(21:24):
sending seeds to space, right? But again, as I mentioned, if we
understand how seeds adapt to the stress of microgravity and
they continue growing and they're still normal and doing
well, that will be a win for, again, long term missions.
Because going to Mars, we're thinking astronauts, you know,
(21:47):
they probably would love to havea diversity of food, material to
eat and in terms of diversity and quality and food that
provides good nutrition. So that is very important for
long term missions. But knowing that those plants
now adapted to microgravity and we can bring them back to Earth,
(22:10):
maybe that can help agriculture in face of those, you know,
extreme environmental stresses. Yeah.
So I'm, I'm now imagining, you know, is like how going through
this research is allowing us to have this controlled, this
(22:30):
controlled stress, this microgravity.
And then we can kind of extrapolate that a little bit
further. It's like, OK, if we have these
stress induced plants, how can we then potentially take this to
create more resilient crops thatmore resilient to, you know,
changing weather, changing pest disease, etcetera.
(22:53):
So you have the ability to better understand, I guess, that
differential expression, a genetic expression by having
this stress induced plants and then trying to see what you can
do with it afterwards. That's, that's really
fascinating is does the stressorfrom the perspective of like the
plant, does the stressor matter like so like microgravity
(23:17):
compared to something like a drought stress response?
Are you seeing like does that stressor matter to that to
plants? I would think so because these
are different type of stresses, right?
But it's to the plant responds in a similar manner.
But for example, microgravity may be affect the genetic
(23:41):
mechanism within the plant, but the plant is to has proper water
light to grow a proper substrate.
So there's they're not really extreme effects of heat or
drought back on Earth. Drought, for example, means, you
know, lack of water. So that's more extreme.
(24:02):
The plant may have some tolerance to that once those
genes are expressed, but to a certain extent of course,
because if it is a prolonged drought period, most likely the
plant may not survive the same for heat and other environmental
stresses. But at least it give us like a
(24:23):
clue that you know this kind of changes in weather patterns.
If the plant cannot at least adapt to short periods of those
changes through this differential expression, that
could be something positive likeagain can help growers and
farmers in in the face of these changes.
(24:43):
Great. Yeah, I love that idea.
Just overall is not only thinking about this really cool
long term type of expedition of,you know, going to Mars, but
we're also thinking about real world implications and impacts
on just here on Earth and agriculture production.
So I think find that actually incredibly fascinating and one
(25:06):
of your fields of research, I'm going to kind of pivot a little
bit has to do with cryopreservation.
How does cryopreservation come into play with this?
Because, you know, I'm a huge nerd.
You know, my phone case is Star Trek Deep Space 9.
So it's like, you know, so this whole thing fascinates me.
But usually when you hear the term cryopreservation, you think
(25:29):
of something that's, like, very science fiction, but it's not.
And you're actually doing this research.
And can you explain what this isand how it relates to this type
of research? Yeah.
Yeah, I like that analogy to science fiction because we've
seen most movies, like Aliens, for example, that people get,
you know, they got frozen for, Idon't know, 1000 years and then
(25:50):
all of a sudden when they reach a destination, they they fell
out and. Back to life.
Like how long was Ripley in cryopreservation?
Yeah, between the 1st and 2nd movie, but sorry.
So, so that's kind of interesting, but that yeah,
cryopreservation allow us to preserve material indefinitely
and, and with plants is way easier right then.
(26:11):
Although an interesting fact, when I started doing research
with cryopreservation, there wasa company, I think the name was
Alcoa, that for $100,000 they would cry preserve your body
once you die and then you know, in the hope that in the future
they could bring you back to life.
(26:33):
But the funniest thing is that they said if you think you know
$100,000 too much for $10,000 wewill cry.
Preserve your head. And that made me think of
Futurama. Futurama, yeah.
So, so, but going back to plantsis that I started doing research
with cryopreservation of seeds, especially orchids, while in the
(26:57):
past I had done some other type of cryopreservation with forest
species. But with seeds, the idea is that
seeds, they, they have a certainviability, right?
When you harvest the seeds, you can measure the embryo and see
if those seeds are viable. Over time, viability decreases.
So there are different ways of storing seeds.
(27:19):
Most people would just store them in the refrigerator and
then maintains a certain level of viability.
But it's too at viability decrease.
So cry preservation, you use some specific solutions that
protect the cells against ice crystals and and the the cells
(27:41):
itself, they're frozen, but they're not completely frozen.
So the the liquid inside the cells, the solutions, they
become almost like the Super cool gel.
It never freezes and that allowsthem to remain alive.
So we did experiments with several types of seeds of
orchids and orchids particularlybecause they're all considered
(28:04):
either in danger or threatened. So we thought will be a great
way to preserve those seeds indefinitely.
We also preserved cryopreserved pollen of orchids and we have
done cryopreservation of in vitro shoots of bananas and
again some forest species like sweet gum, yellow Poplar and
(28:27):
even pecan trees. So that's a good technique for
storing those seeds and how thatwill play into space.
I think pretty much is the fact that let's say we already know
that the seeds can grow in microgravity and you can grow
plants and you can eat them. But again, thinking about loss
(28:47):
of viability of the seeds, if you have a mechanism in the in
the rocket or in the space station like they have, if you
have a little cryo tank, you canpreserve those seeds for those
long term missions knowing that they will not lose viability.
So that could be 1 application of cryopreservation and all that
you need is a small container with liquid nitrogen and and
(29:11):
that's sufficient to preserve them.
So the process of cryopreservation for helping
maintain seed viability, so to kind of how do you get it to
that that state of cryopreservation?
Is it just through the use of liquid nitrogen?
No, we need to do some preparation of the seeds, so we
(29:34):
use a solution called pre vitrification solution.
Vitrification is the process of turning that solution of the
cell into a vitreous solution, but not a frozen solution.
So there's several publications,they use what they call pre
vitrification solution PVS and there are PVS one, PVS 2, PVS
(29:56):
three. We use mostly PVS 2 because it
works well. So we basically we test the
seeds in the solution to make sure that the solution is not
toxic to the seeds. Once we validate the the the
seeds survive the solution, thenwe test them in cryopreservation
in liquid nitrogen. Another thing that helps, we do
(30:20):
a pre cooling of those seats. We put them in ice for one hour,
2 hours or three hours just to start acclimating them to the
cold environment. And then we put them in little
vials with the solution and we put them in a in a container
inside a tank of liquid nitrogen.
So that's basically the process and and the premises that once
(30:43):
they are in liquid nitrogen, it doesn't matter if they are there
for one hour or one year or ten years that the plants remain in
a, let's say a state of suspended animation, right.
So they are there. If you need those seeds back,
you just take them out to do a quick thaw, like very quick in a
(31:03):
couple minutes in a warm water. Then you remove the solution,
clean the seeds and put them to germinate.
Wow. And and is what is interesting
is that let's say you measure the viability of a seed and you
say oh the seed has 80% viability.
In cryopreservation experiments you are expected to have at
(31:24):
least half of that to germinate after cryo event.
So let's say if it is 80% viability, you expect a 40%
germination after cryopreservation.
But through manipulation of those solutions and using some
additives, we're able, let's sayif we just use PVS two, we will
(31:45):
get to maybe 4550%, which is pretty good.
But by using some additives, we get close to the initial 80% so
we can maximize germination after cryo.
So that's this part of the experiments that we play with
and that's kind of interesting. So, yeah, so it is a good
(32:07):
technique. I'm really, I think that's like
really cool because you know, a few months ago, you know, one of
the guests we actually had on the on the podcast was doctor
actor Perez or talking about hiswork with seed conservation
biology. And you know, we talked about
seed banking and I definitely see it's like we have these seed
(32:29):
banks, but then all of a sudden if we're looking at ways because
I know they keep like the seed banks just like right, really
cold. But now we can think about how
cryopreservation has a role in this seed conservation, you
know, for like long term, not just transport through like long
term Space Flight, etcetera, butalso for, you know, just
(32:51):
conservation efforts, you know, different sustainable or
different food crops, etcetera. You know, the whole reason we do
a lot of that conservation. That's I That's fascinating.
Yeah. And, and in fact, that plays
into national security. And I explain why because we
just submitted a short proposal to DARPA, which is to the
(33:12):
creation of a cryo Bank of, you know, main crops, food crops for
the United States. Because again, with all the
changes in, you know, in, in environment and and weather, it
will be important to preserve this key crops a long term.
(33:33):
So in case of a catastrophe or something.
So that's one of our ideas to tap to develop a cryo seed, a
cryo Bank of seeds here at UF. And then the idea will have a
large tank with a unique liquid nitrogen tank that will feed
into the scryo tank. And you can preserve, I mean,
(33:57):
thousands or millions of thousands of seeds in that tank.
Wow. So if that ends up going
through, we might have a follow up episode where we do like a
broadcast live for whatever we can.
If it's not for related, you never know for security
purposes. Yeah, but I this is fascinating.
(34:18):
So I want, I want to ask becauseI feel like I can pick your
brain now forever. But what excites you the most
about, you know, the future of like space based plant science
and how it might end up having these big impacts of
horticulture on Earth and I don't want to say abroad, you
know, interstellar. Yeah, right.
(34:39):
Wow, this is all exciting, right?
So first of all, again, going back when I mentioned to you
there my post doc, that I was very fascinated by space.
But going even further back, I remember when I was a little
kid, I was maybe 4-5 years old when the man landed on the moon.
(35:00):
And, and I didn't understand much, but I remember everybody
glued to the TV and watching it live.
And I was like, wow. And I would always look at the
moon and think, man, the man wasthere.
You know, that's fascinating. So I carried that fascination
through all my life and and my career.
And I was fortunate enough to get these opportunities to fly
(35:22):
those experiments. So that to me is very exciting.
Just every time I walk into the Kennedy Space Center, you know,
and I'm able to get access is, is it just feels really amazing.
The one interesting piece of information when I had my first
Space Flight experiment I I was able to get to the VIP session
(35:43):
at the Kennett Space Center to watch the launch and I had my
camera pointed and everything all set up.
I could not take a picture because I was so nervous but
full of excitement that I decided let me just enjoy the
moment and forget about the photos.
I can copy photos from Naza later on and since then I've
(36:06):
been there and, you know, be able to photograph several
launches and and landings as well, which is quite an exciting
and this last experiment with sand about a month ago.
We actually Naza now is more restrictive with access.
But as I was sitting there at the it's called the Space
(36:30):
Science Processing Facility, I got a call from the press side
of NASA saying, hey, there's somebody here who wants to
interview you and we wonder if you could come here.
And I said, well, I don't think I have access.
So this nice lady from as I said, oh, come and pick you up.
I said, great. So once I got there, I had the
(36:52):
front view of the launchpad and,and that was amazing.
So I got a very nice photo that I'll be glad to share with you.
But it was really, it was exciting.
And, and again, every time you see that rocket going up and you
and you think, wow, there, my seats are there.
It's, it's like it's out of thisworld, right?
(37:14):
It's really, it blows your mind.So.
So that's very exciting. So in terms of future, I figure
it will be amazing if we will have more opportunities because
now as we get more data, we start building new ideas for
more experiments. And this is becoming a big deal
for UF and also for the world. For example, I mentioned
(37:37):
Embrapa. Embrapa is organizing the first
international symposium on spacefarming in October, and I'll be
there together with Doctor Farrell and Doctor and Eliza
Paul. So that's interesting.
And, and then we have the Astrayas Space Institute that
you have. And, and just recently I was
(38:00):
asked to sit on a task force to develop a curriculum on space
biology. So this this is all exciting
because we feel like, hey, we'regoing to have a, a program on
space biology Eduf that studentscan enroll in that program and
get a degree in space biology. So that's fascinating, right?
(38:24):
Oh wow, so it's not just research, but it's now becoming
it. It's a field.
It's a few, yeah. It's a big field.
And as you see, you know, we have launches almost every week
now. So it's becoming like mainstream
traveling to space. And you have Blue Origin, which
is the other side that they alsodo this short flights that Rob
(38:46):
Farrell was in one of them. Actually, we had the sort of an
experiment there where you remember the one that took Katy
Perry. Yeah, yeah.
That one carry seeds of chickpeaand in vitro plants of sweet
potato. The chickpea seeds came from
Brapa, Brazil and the sweet potato plants came from the
(39:11):
USDA. We wanted to send our own plants
from Brapa, but they they got stuck in quarantine.
So USDA was nice enough and say,hey, you need some plants, we
have some, take some of ours. So and why chickpea and sweet
potatoes again, we're thinking about plants that provide good
source of proteins, fiber and they have good taste.
(39:34):
And interestingly enough, last year I was in a workshop in
Brazil sponsored by Embrap and Brazilian Space Agency and they
talk about this two crops, chickpeas and sweet potatoes.
So they invited a chef who made Donuts where the dough were made
out of sweet potato. Potato flour.
(39:56):
And the filling was the cream made out of chickpeas, like a
hummus, but sweet. Sweet hummus.
And they were really good. So just to show the potential,
you know, using those crops. For they were they tasted out of
this world. Yes, bad pun.
Yes, that's all right. I that's fascinating.
(40:22):
I'm just imagining everyone was obsessed with like seeing like,
oh, Katy Perry's in Space, but it's actually research was
happening simultaneously. Yeah, of course.
You know, Katy Perry was more interesting for the public than
chick pieces. Fair enough, fair enough.
I I'm just imagining, you know, you being able to go back to
(40:43):
your yourself as a kid and like what you're what you would
think, what yourself as a kid would think.
Looking at you now in this cool research that you have been
doing, the research you have been helping lead lead in with
your teams, the partnerships. So I just want to absolutely
fascinating because the work that we've been doing from how
(41:07):
I'm understanding is we're just at the beginning and you know,
we're going to learn a lot, especially now that we're having
more investment in space scienceresearch.
So I, you know, I have to wrap us up, but sure, I want to thank
you so much for taking the time and sharing your stories with
(41:28):
us, sharing this research with us.
But I may, we may try to see if we can bring you back in the
future to kind of like what are some of the new things that
we're learning, you know, maybe with the institute, kind of
maybe like a round table or something like that.
Because like you mentioned, it'slike you're 1 member of this
bigger team. And it's just fascinating the
(41:50):
kind of that you're at the forefront of at this and as well
as the University of Florida. So thank you so much for joining
us today. And I look forward to hearing
more and reading more about the research that you've been doing.
Well, thank you, Taylor. It's been a pleasure talking to
you. This has been a fun conversation
and I'll be glad to come back anytime.
(42:11):
Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Vandrame, I
really appreciate it. That's it for today's journey
250 miles up. A big thank you to Doctor
Vandrame for sharing how space plant research is giving us new
ways to think about resiliency here on Earth.
From seeds and orbit to crops inour fields, these discoveries
remind us that innovation in themost unexpected places can help
(42:33):
us grow stronger, more adaptableplants for the future.
Thanks for joining us on Cultivating Curiosity.
If you enjoy this episode, be sure to subscribe and share it
with a fellow plant enthusiast. Until next time, keep growing
your curiosity.
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