Experiment integration and tissue sharing

After the MD [Mammalian Development] profusion is complete, and the body is separated into the rostral and caudal sections, the rostral section goes to Dr. Raymond, she removes the vestibular system and the brain. The forebrain, eyes and first segments of the spinal cord go to the Fuller/Pompiano team, The brainstem cerebellum complex goes to Dr. Holstein, the temporal bones go to Dr. Ross. Then Dr. Shimizu gets the trunk to remove the heart and aorta, and so forth.

Meanwhile the posterior portion of the body has gone to Dr. Riley to get out the muscles and the spinal cord, and Dr,. Baldwin, and so on and so forth!

You've got to know where the parts are supposed to go: Where the people are. Where the laboratories are. Make sure all the equipment is there, because once we start the event, you can't just stop and say,"Gee, where was this supposed to go?" All of the processing of all of these tissues is time critical.

The body then goes to the speciment sharing plans, and is processed in order to remove the tissues for the proposals that have been accepted for that plan. After the entire Neurolab mission was defined and developed, it was determined to make the maximum use out of the flight tissues and ground control tissues. We did an analysis of what type of tissues might be made available to a broader segment of the scientific community. What we identified was, that since the utilization of the neonates was so complete, there wasn't anything to share. But since the focus of the ANP [Adult Neuronal Plasticity] team was on the brain of these adult male rats, in fact the carcass was availiable.

So NASA Headquarters and Kennedy Space Center put together a limited Announcement of Opportunity that they sent out to the scientific community indicating that this tissue under these conditions would be available. Would they be interested in using these tissues to address some of the scientific issues that they'd already raised in the past? Seven proposals were submitted, they were examined for feasibility and were determined to be acceptable, and so now after the Adult Neuronal Plasticity team takes the head, with the brain, the body is turned over to a separate team of dissectors who will remove various organs and tissues from those bodies in order to meet these additional objective

So, whereas we started out with 15 Neurolab non-human investigations, we're now really up to 22, because we have 7 additional investigators benefitting from these tissues.