Bioprocessing in microgravity: applications of continuous flow electrophoresis to rat anterior pituitary particles

In this report we describe the results of a continuous flow electrophoresis (CFE) experiment done on STS-65 in which we tested the idea that intracellular growth hormone (GH) particles contained in a cell lysate prepared from cultured rat anterior pituitary cells in microgravity might have different electrophoretic mobilities from those in a synchronous ground control cell lysate. Collectively, the results suggested that CFE processing in microgravity was better than on earth; more sample could be processed/time (6 × ) and more variant forms of GH molecules could be resolved as well. We had also hoped to carry out a pituitary cell CFE experiment, but failure of the hardware required that the actual cell electrophoresis trials be done on earth shortly after Shuttle landing. Data from these experiments showed that space-flown cells possessed a higher electrophoretic mobility than ground control cells, thereby offering evidence for the idea that exposure of cultured cells to microgravity can change their net surface charge-density especially when the cells are fed. Collectively, the results from this pituitary cell experiment document the advantage of using coupled cell culture and CFE techniques in the microgravity environment.