Space biological and human survival: Investigations into plants, animals, microorganisms and their components and bioregenerative life support systems

Abstract

Space life science has been a frontier discipline in the life sciences, aiming to study the life phenomena of earth organisms and their activity patterns under the special environment of space. This review summarizes studies in various key topics in space life science, namely, how microbiome changes in humans and plants, the development of space agriculture and the use of animal, plant and cell models to study the effect of space environments on physiology. We highlight the new possibilities of using high-quality protein crystals uniquely available when grown under space conditions to aid drug development on earth, and the state-of-the-art Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS) to achieve long term human survival in space.