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🌱🚀 Astrobotany & Space Biology (AIR)

Welcome to the AstroBotany Investigation Resource (AIR) — a holistic, research-intensive undergraduate track combining space biology, automated phenotyping, computational systems modeling, and spaceflight bioinformatics.

Over a cohesive 12-week program, students progress from basic plant cultivation and scientific imaging to advanced simulated-microgravity assays on Random Positioning Machines (RPMs), multicellular auxin transport simulations, and mining actual NASA spaceflight transcriptomics datasets (RNA-seq).

Students, plants, and space themes blended together
The AIR Undergraduate Track blends biology, data science, hardware engineering, and space exploration.

Start your astrobotany journey by exploring the core program planning materials:

  • Track Overview

    Explore program objectives, core competencies, and required equipment.

    Course Overview

  • Course Syllabus

    Review learning outcomes, weekly expectations, grading policies, and evaluation rubrics.

    Review Syllabus

  • Weekly Schedule

    Step-by-step 12-week calendar mapping readings, laboratory exercises, and deliverables.

    Weekly Schedule

  • Open & FAIR Science

    Contribute to worldwide open-science initiatives using standardized databases and sharing guides.

    Reference & Tools

🗺️ The 11 Program Stages of the Undergraduate Track

Students will progress sequentially through 11 research stages, bridging macroscopic observations with microscopic transcriptomics and computational models:

Unit 1: Foundations of Phenotyping (Weeks 1–2)

  • Stage I — Scientific Photography: Learn to capture clear, repeatable, and calibrated plant photographs using standardized scale bars (the AstroBotany Spectrum) for automated computer-vision measurements.
  • Stage II — Favorite Microgreen: Explore nutrition and crop yield datasets to inform crop selection and understand the data-driven science of space agricultural diets.
  • Stage III — Growing Microgreens: Cultivate microgreens in terrestrial growth media and perform daily photography to analyze canopy coverage and Green Area Index (GAI) via PlantCV.

Unit 2: Tropisms & Simulated Microgravity (Weeks 3–4 & 7–8)

  • Stage IV — Gravity & Roots: Grow roots vertically on plant-based agar plates, then rotate plates 90° to document and analyze root gravitropic reorientation kinetics.
  • Stage V — Auxin & Plant Cloning: Explore plant hormone dynamics by inducing cell dedifferentiation and initiating plant stem cell (callus) cultures.
  • Stage VI — Micro-Gravi-tropism Assays: Execute advanced, quantitative multi-hour gravitropic assays on shoots and roots under vertical conditions and simulated microgravity.

Unit 3: Computational Modeling & Spaceflight Omics (Weeks 5–6 & 9)

  • Stage VII — Hormone Transport Modelling: Run multicellular computational simulations of membrane-bound transporter proteins to predict cellular auxin transport gradients.
  • Stage VIII — Root Modelling: Simulate root hydraulic architecture, water movement, and localized hydropatterning under varied moisture vectors.
  • Stage IX — Plant Modelling: Model whole-plant developmental architecture and photosynthetic yields under simulated closed-loop life-support constraints.
  • Stage X — Mining RNA-seq: Query the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) / GeneLab to analyze actual spaceflight transcriptomics datasets and model metabolic adaptations to microgravity.
  • Stage XI — Membrane Interactome: Map membrane-bound receptor and transport interactome networks to investigate environmental sensing pathways.

🔬 Why this is Real Science

AIR utilizes an open, FAIR approach (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). All data shared by students to standardized platforms such as Epicollect5 adheres to unified research standards. Everything on this site is released in the public domain (CC0 1.0), allowing classrooms, research groups, and space biology enthusiasts worldwide to freely utilize, remix, and translate these resources.

A program of the SKG Astrobotany Research and Education Program (Osaka, Japan) and the Gilroy Lab, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Developed by Gilbert Cauthorn, Sophia Griffith, Rachel Wang, and Dr. Richard Barker.