STS-101 (Atlantis, 19 May 00 - 29 May 00):

Gene Transfer into Soybeans

On STS-101, WCSAR and its industry partner Producers' Natural Processing (PNP) further investigated the effects of microgravity on the Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation of soybean seedlings, an experiment initially flown on STS-95.

A Sunrise Launch Atlantis launches on the 19th of May at 6:11 am EDT.

The payload contained 1000 soybean seeds which, once in microgravity, were exposed to Agrobacterium carrying a reporter gene. Upon returning to Earth, the seedlings were analyzed and showed promising results. In normal ground conditions, the gene transfer success rate in soybeans, measured by the expression of the reporter gene, is about 0.1%. In a microgravity environment, the DNA delivery increased by at least one order of magnitude.

Cosmonaut Yuri Usachev performs the gene transfer experiment during STS-101

STS-50 - STS-57 - STS-60 - STS-63 - STS-73 - STS-95 - STS-101 - STS-107  /  STS-89/91 - Inc 2 - Inc 4 - Inc 5