Team:UNIK Copenhagen/Moss

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Why moss?

The aim of green lab is to genetically manipulate moss, Specifically we transform the bryophyte species calles 'Physcomitrella patens'. But why are we using moss for our experiments rather than the usual chassis organisms, like bacteria or yeast? There are three main reasons for this:

1. moss is a hardy plant. Moss can grow under many conditions, such as in the shade or on the surface of rocks. And since Mars is a tough place to live we need a tough organism for our plans to succeed.

2. Moss is a photosynthetic organism and thus produce oxygen, where yeast and (most) bacteria are heterotrophic organism do not. Being able to do photosynthesis and produce oxygen is very useful on a spacemission.

3. Moss transformation technologies is called "the yeast of plant biology" since it, like yeast, is able to do homologous recombination[1]. Moss has already been used extensivily as a model organism in plant biology and has been used as a bioreactor for many different compounds [2].

One of our petri dishes with moss

Moss growing facility

We envision that the astronauts eventually will be able to plant the moss directly on the surface of Mars. If we could make moss survive on mars, we would in a sense create a useful "Harddrive" on which the "software" can be installed. This "software" could be different biopharmaceutical ingredient productions. Thus we want to make P. patens more adapted to the martian environment. There are many factors on Mars that are lethal to living organisms, but as a start we would focus on the violent temperature flucturations on Mars. The temperatures on Mars can drop well below zero at night and therefore we found a novel antifreeze protein for expression in the moss. This could be an importent first step in designing organisms suited for the martian environment, which can help create a sustainable settlement on Mars.
In principle, the Mars-adapted moss could be transformed to produce many of the biopharmaceutical ingredients that astronauts may need on a space mission. As a proof of this concept we wanted our moss to produce resveratrol. Resveratrol is a phenolic compound normally found in red wine and is believed to have positive health benefits in mammals [3],[4]. if this compound can be produced, it opens the door for a wide range of other applications, that is essential for space exploration. This would prove, that different kinds of "software" can be installed on the mars adapted moss "hardware".
However, using moss for experiments comes at a price. If you ever find yourself divided between two choices: watching moss grow or watching paint dry, opt for the latter. Moss is painstakingly slow growing compared to for example bacteria and yeast. After transformation of moss protoplasts, it takes about eight weeks for the moss to form small clumps when grown in a petri dish. So experiments with moss need to be well planned and have lots of time avaliable.