Summary

Deep space exploration exposes human astronauts, animals, and plants to the stressors of the space environment, including increased radiation and altered gravity. Digital twins (DT) (computational models of physical systems, which can be perturbed to predict the behavior of the real systems) can help us understand the impacts of these stressors. An open-source project called “OpenWorm” aims to develop a DT/virtual organism of C. elegans, a small worm that has been featured in several NASA space experiments. Your challenge is to design an open-source project where the community can contribute to developing a C. elegans digital twin that can help determine the effects of factors that impact living organisms in space.

Background

Deep space exploration exposes human astronauts, animals, and plants to the stressors of the space environment, including increased radiation and altered gravity. To characterize these effects, researchers analyze data from space biology experiments that involve organisms flown in space.

Digital twins (DTs) are computational models of physical systems, which can be perturbed to predict the behavior of the real physical systems. DTs are a powerful method for modeling full cells or organisms and predicting perturbational effects. DTs have been developed for many biological systems including whole microbial cells and mammalian organ systems. In fact, an open-source project called “OpenWorm” aims to develop a DT/virtual organism of C. elegans, a small worm that is often used to study biological development and has been featured in several NASA space experiments.

Objective

Your challenge is to design an open-source project where the community can contribute to developing a C. elegans digital twin that can be perturbed at the molecular level to help determine the effects of factors that impact living organisms in space (e.g., increased radiation, gravity alterations, etc.). For inspiration, you may consider looking at the open-source project being developed via OpenWorm called the “Muscle-Neuron-Channel Integration” project (see keyword search suggestions in the Resources).

Potential Considerations

You may (but are not required to) consider the following when creating your solution:

You can search the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) (see Resources) for C. elegans datasets by filtering your repository search to “Worm” under the “Organism” filter on the left panel.
What types of data will be most useful for modeling and simulating space exposure?
How can you preprocess and normalize disparate datasets into a cohesive input to a model?
Are there any other types of data that could be integrated to augment what is available in OSDR?
How could the model be validated and tested?
What are the key milestones of the project?
You could take the following approach to address this challenge:
- Investigate the available public space biology C. elegans data from NASA GeneLab and the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) (see Resources).
- Once you’ve identified the appropriate datasets, design a data preprocessing workflow to combine these datasets into usable input.
- Next, design a “Roadmap” that includes a detailed list of all the steps and computational methods needed to complete the project. Again, you can take inspiration from the OpenWorm “Muscle-Neuron-Channel Integration” project (see keyword search suggestions in the Resources). Don’t forget to include validation and testing of the model in your plan!

For data and resources related to this challenge, refer to the Resources tab at the top of the page.

NASA Space Apps 2023

Space Biology Digital Twins: Modeling Worms in Space!