From Development and flight-testing of a modular autonomous cultivation system for biological plastics upcycling aboard the International Space Station
Xin Liu1,, Pat Pataranutaporn1,, Benjamin Fram2, Allison Z. Werner3,*, Sunanda Sharma5, Nicholas P. Gauthier4, Erika Erickson3, Patrick Chwalek1, Kelsey J. Ramirez3, Morgan A. Ingraham3, Natasha P. Murphy3, Krista A Ryon6, Braden T Tierney6, Gregg T. Beckham3, Christopher E. Mason7, Ariel Ekblaw1
[1] MIT Media Lab , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA [2] Harvard Medical School, Department of Systems Biology, Boston, MA [3] Renewable Resources and Enabling Sciences Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO [4] Department of Data Sciences, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA [5] Space Exploration Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA [6] Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University, New York, NY [7] Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY
Correspondence: xxxxxxin@mit.edu, patpat@mit.edu, allison.werner@nrel.gov
Cultivation of microorganisms in space has enormous potential to enable in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), but spaceflight infrastructure for growing microorganisms without resource-intensive astronaut support is lacking. Here, we develop and validate an autonomous payload, termed the Modular Open Biological Platform (MOBP), for enzymatic reactions and microbial cultivation with fully programmable serial passaging and sample preservation. The MOBP is a compact, modular bioreactor system that allows for automatic media transfers and precise data monitoring from integrated sensors. The payload enables serial sample collection and storage for terrestrial analysis, including RNA and DNA sequencing and proteomics. We designed two experiments for validation of the MOBP aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with the application of upcycling the ubiquitous plastic poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). In the enzymatic experiment, PET is depolymerized by the enzyme PETase to terephthalate (TPA), which can then be polymerized back into virgin quality PET. In the cell-based experiment, TPA is converted to β-ketoadipate (βKA) by an engineered Pseudomonas putida KT2440 bacterium. βKA can be polymerized into a nylon-6,6 analog with improved properties for use in the production of a variety of materials, including high-performance textiles and molded parts including air intake manifolds, electro-insulation elements and hinges, thus demonstrating plastics upcycling. We posit our modular open system will enable increased realization of synthetic biology experiments and applications in spaceflight that will ultimately enable ISRU and plastics upcycling during space travel.
In-situ resource utilization, plastics upcycling, biomanufacturing