Life sciences

Abstract

Since the advent of space flight, the scope of life sciences has greatly expanded, adding new facets to existing disciplines, such as to gravitational biology, or even creating new disciplines, such as astrobiology. Exposing living systems to an environment which they have not yet experienced in their lifetime and also not their ancestors during evolution brings new exciting experimental approaches and results. Excluding the important environmental stimulus gravity provides a new experimental tool towards our understanding of the physiology and fundamental mechanisms of life. It requires an integrative experimental approach at all levels of organization-from molecules, single cells, tissue, and organs, up to the whole organism. This field is covered by the expanding discipline of gravitational biology using the unique possibilities to perform experiments in space.