Intergenerational effect of short-term spaceflight in mice

Keisuke Yoshida; Shin-Ichiro Fujita; Ayako Isotani; Takashi Kudo; Satoru Takahashi; Masahito Ikawa; Dai Shiba; Masaki Shirakawa; Masafumi Muratani; Shunsuke Ishii

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102773

Intergenerational effect of short-term spaceflight in mice

iScience. 2021 Jun 25;24(7):102773. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102773. eCollection 2021 Jul 23.

Authors

Keisuke Yoshida¹, Shin-Ichiro Fujita², Ayako Isotani³, Takashi Kudo^{4

5}, Satoru Takahashi^{4

5}, Masahito Ikawa^{3

5}, Dai Shiba^{5

6}, Masaki Shirakawa^{5

6}, Masafumi Muratani^{2

5}, Shunsuke Ishii^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0074, Japan.
² Department of Genome Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8575, Japan.
³ Department of Experimental Genome Research, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
⁴ Laboratory Animal Resource Center in Transborder Medical Research Center, and Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8575, Japan.
⁵ Mouse Epigenetics Project, ISS/Kibo experiment, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Tsukuba, Japan.
⁶ JEM Utilization Center, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA, Ibaraki 305-8505, Japan.
⁷ Department of Functional Genomics, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8577, Japan.

Abstract

As space travel becomes more accessible, it is important to understand the effects of spaceflight including microgravity, cosmic radiation, and psychological stress. However, the effect on offspring has not been well studied in mammals. Here we investigated the effect of 35 days spaceflight on male germ cells. Male mice that had experienced spaceflight exhibit alterations in binding of transcription factor ATF7, a regulator of heterochromatin formation, on promoter regions in testis, as well as altered small RNA expression in spermatozoa. Offspring of space-traveling males exhibit elevated hepatic expression of genes related to DNA replication. These results indicate that spaceflight has intergenerational effect.

Keywords: Space sciences; Transcriptomics.