The purpose of the BIOxTREME project, launched by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) and funded by ASI (Italian Space Agency), is to formulate new biological drugs having a stimulant activity on the immune system, finalizing the production for a "ready to use" resource in Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLSSs) for space missions intended for long-term duration, in deep space, and with multiple crews. One of the project tasks is to study the effects of physical insults on plants, trying to simulate cosmic environment on the production platforms exposing biological material to ionizing radiation, static magnetic fields and microgravity. In order to examine the biological effects, to test plant radio-resistance and to build dose-response curves we carried out proton irradiations of anthocyanin rich (red) "hairy roots" derived from the tomato cultivar Micro-Tom with different proton energies for several doses with the TOP-IMPLART accelerator at the ENEA Frascati Research center. The biological samples were placed in a holder specially made in a movable real-time monitoring chamber calibrated in dose. The fluence-homogeneity measurements over the sample and the calibration of the monitoring system were performed using GafChromic EBT3 films, placed in air in the same position as the biological samples to be irradiated. The present paper describes the experimental set-up and reports the preliminary results. Copyright © 2015 CC-BY-3.0 and by the respective authors.
Proton irradiations of Micro-Tom red hairy roots to mimic space conditions
Villani, M.E.;Snels, C.;Massa, S.;Desiderio, A.;Benvenuto, E.;Surrenti, V.;Ronsivalle, C.;Nenzi, P.;Picardi, L.;Bazzano, G.;Vadrucci, M.
2015-01-01
Abstract
The purpose of the BIOxTREME project, launched by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) and funded by ASI (Italian Space Agency), is to formulate new biological drugs having a stimulant activity on the immune system, finalizing the production for a "ready to use" resource in Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLSSs) for space missions intended for long-term duration, in deep space, and with multiple crews. One of the project tasks is to study the effects of physical insults on plants, trying to simulate cosmic environment on the production platforms exposing biological material to ionizing radiation, static magnetic fields and microgravity. In order to examine the biological effects, to test plant radio-resistance and to build dose-response curves we carried out proton irradiations of anthocyanin rich (red) "hairy roots" derived from the tomato cultivar Micro-Tom with different proton energies for several doses with the TOP-IMPLART accelerator at the ENEA Frascati Research center. The biological samples were placed in a holder specially made in a movable real-time monitoring chamber calibrated in dose. The fluence-homogeneity measurements over the sample and the calibration of the monitoring system were performed using GafChromic EBT3 films, placed in air in the same position as the biological samples to be irradiated. The present paper describes the experimental set-up and reports the preliminary results. Copyright © 2015 CC-BY-3.0 and by the respective authors.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
