Inside Out

Many types of cells in our body are able to move from one place to another through a process called cell migration. This is important for organs to develop early in life. It also allows white blood cells and cancer cells to spread inside our body. Fat cells, the cells in our fat tissue that store energy, were always believed to be incapable of moving. However, we recently discovered that fat cells can actually migrate by swimming inside the body fluid of the fruit fly. This allows them to travel to skin wounds and help the wounds to heal.

Driven by boredom and lunchtime drinking during lockdown, we decided to embark on a small side project to look at the effect of spaceflight on kidney function, as we could get animal samples that had been flown to the International Space Station and back for free (incl postage and packaging). This bloomed into a 2-year project with >100 authors on the resulting main paper. And what we found wasn’t great; microgravity seems to cause your kidneys to change shape and make you more prone to kidney stones (one of the most painful things you can experience) and perhaps worsen bone loss. And, even worse, we found that Galactic Cosmic Radiation (that you’re exposed to when you leave Earth’s protective magnetic field) causes kidney damage, that might lead to kidney failure with prolonged exposure, such as astronauts would get on a round trip to Mars. We hope that by studying these extreme phenomena, that we can gain terrestrial insights into treating patients in intensive care, and those with acute or chronic kidney damage.