Oxidative and nutrient stability of a standard rodent spaceflight diet during long-term storage.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's standard spaceflight diet for rodents is the nutrient-upgraded rodent food bar (NuRFB). The shelf life of the NuRFB needs to be determined in order to avoid malnutrition of rodents and confounding of research results resulting from nutritional deficiency. The authors compared the oxidative and nutrient stability of NuRFBs stored at either ambient temperature (26 °C) or at refrigeration temperature (4 °C) for use in long-term rodent feeding experiments.

Evaluation of the nutrient-upgraded rodent food bar for rodent spaceflight experiments.

Objective: Selection of an appropriate diet for rodent spaceflight experiments is critical and may have significant effects on mission results. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) rodent food bar (RFB) was reformulated and designated as the nutrient-upgraded RFB (NuRFB). The objectives of this study were to determine whether the NuRFB nutrient formulation meets the 1995 National Research Council (NRC) nutrient recommendations and whether the NuRFB can be used for short-term (45-d) and long-term (90-d) spaceflight experiments.

Methods for the culture of C. elegans and S. cerevisiae in microgravity.

To support the study of the effects of microgravity on biological systems, our group is developing and testing methods that allow the cultivation of C. elegans and S. cerevisiae in microgravity.