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One small step for man. One giant leap for yeast — and hopefully humankind, too.

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When an unmanned moon rocket takes off from Kennedy Space Center next Monday, millions of tiny organisms from the University of B.C. will be on board.

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Pharmaceutical sciences researcher Corey Nislow and his UBC team are among a very few participants in NASA’s space biology program invited to bring samples on board. The payload: Custom yeast mutants and green algae.

The organisms will travel on the Orion spacecraft as part of the first moonshot in the Artemis program — which is eventually expected to include manned flights around the moon’s orbit for a wide variety of research purposes, and to test the limits of human survival in space. (A total of four Artemis missions are planned in the coming years.)

Nislow’s yeast and algae are going up into space mainly for future medical research. Taking organisms that far beyond the protection of the Van Allen belts means they’ll be bombarded by anywhere from 20 to 50 times the cosmic radiation we experience on Earth.

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Studying the effects of that bombardment on the samples could open the door to new avenues in cancer treatment, because DNA degradation is a byproduct of many chemotherapies. Other uses include everything from therapeutic drugs for viruses like monkeypox to countermeasures against radiation for future space travellers.

It’s not the first time Nislow’s carefully curated organisms have been into space on a NASA mission — there was yeast studied on the International Space Station back in 2011 — but this mission is groundbreaking because of one simple fact.

“It’s the first time in 50 years where we’re leaving lower Earth’s orbit with biological material that’s coming back,” says Nislow, clearly excited about the impending launch.

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Yes, Apollo astronauts went into similar orbits, but those flights were so brief they weren’t meaningful for measuring the effects of cosmic radiation. These organisms will spend 45 to 50 days in the moon’s orbit, allowing them to degrade, react and mutate in a multitude of ways and through seven generations.

His 6,000 custom yeast samples and algae will fit into essentially two shoeboxes, making it a treasure trove of scientific data in a tiny area. That’s important because, as Nislow explains, the space his samples take up would barely be enough room for a single mouse to travel in — assuming the poor thing were to survive the hazardous journey.

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“What do cosmic rays do to organisms?” is the key question, notes Nislow. And what does the genome do to react to that stress?

Nislow says only about 10 per cent of the experiments in this kind of research are done in space. The other 90 per cent are done back on Earth, using highly specialized equipment to bombard organisms with elements that mimic cosmic radiation. But there’s nothing quite like the real thing.

Artemis I will allow a “real picture” of the effects of space travel on organisms. “And we will have a really excellent record of the weather, what the solar winds were like, solar flares … It’s a really nice test case for what a month in deep space looks like for a living organism.”

The research could even one day help travellers safely get to Mars, so Elon Musk must also be pretty excited.

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But the more immediate need is using these yeasts, which are surprisingly similar to humans in their overall genome, to quickly test drugs and other therapies.

“We have all these great drugs, but they’re underused,” he says. “In weeks we can do tests with yeast, whereas a (human) clinical trial will take many months.”

Nislow has been doing studies with yeast mutants for two decades. He figures the samples coming back with Artemis — “fingers and toes crossed” — will be studied long past his own retirement.

And humankind has the humble yeast to thank.

• The Artemis I spacecraft is set for launch early on Monday, Aug. 29, weather permitting. You can view it live on the NASA website, YouTube and other social media channels.

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