Abstract
Extensive spaceflight life investigations (SLIs) have revealed observable space effects on plants, particularly their growth, nutrition yield, and secondary metabolite production. Knowledge of these effects not only facilitates space agricultural and biopharmaceutical technology development but also provides unique perspectives to ground-based investigations. SLIs are specialized experimental protocols and notable biological phenomena. These require specialized databases, leading to the development of the NASA Science Data Archive, Erasmus Experiment Archive, and NASA GeneLab. The increasing interests of SLIs across diverse fields demand resources with comprehensive content, convenient search facilities, and friendly information presentation. A new database SpaceLID (Space Life Investigation Database http://bidd.group/spacelid/) was developed with detailed menu search tools and categorized contents about the phenomena, protocols, and outcomes of 459 SLIs (including 106 plant investigations) of 92 species, where 236 SLIs and 57 plant investigations are uncovered by the existing databases. The usefulness of SpaceLID as an SLI information source is illustrated by the literature-reported analysis of metabolite, nutrition, and symbiosis variations of spaceflight plants. In conclusion, this study extensively investigated the impact of the space environment on plant biology, utilizing SpaceLID as an information source and examining various plant species, including Arabidopsis thaliana, Brassica rapa L., and Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. The findings provide valuable insights into the effects of space conditions on plant physiology and metabolism.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Space Exploration Breeding Grant of Qian Xuesen Lab (TKTSPY-2020-04-03), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (92256203), the Scientific Research Grant of Ningbo University (215-432000282), Ningbo Top Talent Project (215-432094250).
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Communicated by Anastasios Melis.
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Wang, S., Wang, J., Zeng, X. et al. Database of space life investigations and information on spaceflight plant biology. Planta 258, 58 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-023-04213-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-023-04213-0