Student Klára Cigošová: For research in simulated microgravity all the way to France

“This year, I spent two months on an internship in France at the Université de Montpellier, which I got into through collaboration on another project within a call from the European Space Agency. It was thanks to this call that I met my local supervisor,” explains Klára.

The purpose of the call issued by the European Space Agency (ESA) was to enable students to use the facilities of the space station and conduct their own research using the available technical equipment. Klára learned about the call through a scientist who has a close connection to space herself.

“I have always been drawn to the natural sciences, but the real realization that I wanted to fully dedicate myself to them came in my final year of high school. During my anthropology studies, I felt something was missing, and I started looking for ways to actively engage in research and make the most of it. Former graduate of the same art high school, Lucie Ráčková, who was then a PhD student at the RECETOX center, helped me with this. I shared my plans with Lucie and mentioned the research group of Associate Professor Křivánek, whose work I found incredibly interesting. She told me about the ESA call and suggested that we could try to propose something and contact Associate Professor Křivánek. It all started with a friendly meeting in a café,” Klára recalls.

Klára learned about Jan Křivánek’s research group during a high school excursion. She was impressed by how openly he approached students and what he was able to show them in the lab in just one day. When she contacted the group leader three years later with an opportunity related to ESA and an interest in joining the research team, the scientist accepted her. Although they did not succeed in the call, thanks to the openness of her supervisor and the support of the entire team opened not only the doors of the Faculty of Medicine’s laboratory but also laid the groundwork for her future internship in Montpellier.

“Our experiment was too costly for what ESA offered in the announced student call for proposals. We wanted to send mice into space using a specially designed habitat in which rodents can undergo space flight. It’s essentially a cage adapted to space conditions. We were interested in the effect of space flight and weightlessness on tooth growth and bone remodeling, which we wanted to study with a new method. However, ESA does not have much experience with rodent research, unlike the American NASA and Japanese JAXA. The habitat could theoretically be rented, but that would involve many complications that could not be resolved within the challenge, and designing a new habitat would be a long-term endeavor. During the collaboration on the mentioned project, I met my French supervisor, Margot Issertine, and we managed to establish cooperation between our laboratories. Margot worked during her master’s studies at Harvard University, where they invented models that allow mice or rats to simulate the weightlessness experienced by astronauts in space. While in Montpellier, they had improved models for simulation and a designed study primarily focused on muscles, we had the appropriate method and experience in hard tissue research. So we put it together,” explains Klára.

Klára went to France to help with the entire experiment. They focused on examining the impact of physical preparation (exercise) on the negative consequences of being in a weightless state. A space mission represents a significant burden on the human body, which can adapt to these challenging conditions in many ways. However, after returning to Earth, the result of the adaptation poses a complication. In a weightless state, the body is not subjected to load, and because the organism tries to save energy and nutrients and use it as efficiently as possible, it stops investing it in mechanisms that maintain, for example, strong bones, as in the body does not need as strong mechanical support and there is muscle atrophy. After landing, astronauts undergo a series of rehabilitations, but researchers were interested in how effective physical preparation before the flight is. What people usually experience was tested on rats.

"While the project centers on investigating the effects of simulated microgravity and interpreting the results within that context, it’s important to note that numerous other factors, such as radiation, changes in circadian rhythms, psychological influences, and various environmental conditions, also have an impact. It cannot be simply said that simulated conditions perfectly correspond to those in space,” the student points out.

Two models were used in the experiment. The first is HU (Hindlimb Unloading), which allows simulating weightlessness. The second model is PWB (Partial Weight Bearing), which allows the unloading of all four limbs simultaneously, which can simulate partial gravity or the mentioned rehabilitation phase.

“We exercised with all the rats in the laboratory for six hours a day for three weeks; I had never experienced such exercise personally. They underwent endurance and resistance training, and at the end of this period, some rats were able to carry up to three times their weight, therefore almost 1 kilogram. When we then measured the percentage of body fat, the effect was noticeable. After exercise, they went into simulated microgravity (HU model) and then into the mentioned PWB model. Now it’s time to process all the samples of different types of bones and the actual analysis. In France, they kept not only muscles for analysis but also the brain, respiratory system, and entire digestive tract,” describes Klára.

Laboratory work with rats and other animals is often a sensitive subject for the public, and Klára recognizes the importance of the ethical aspects of research. As she points out, it is important to keep in mind that although it is possible to answer many research questions using, for example, in vitro models, science simply cannot do without animals yet.

“In my opinion, working with animals requires a certain humility and an awareness that we couldn’t do it without them. We have a lot to be grateful for. I am glad that there are organizations and other protective mechanisms that oversee the entire research process,” summarizes Klára.

Although the research was led by Margot Issertine, according to Klára, Associate Professor Křivánek was a great support throughout. She went to Montpellier through the Erasmus program, with the help of all the members of the research group at the Faculty of Medicine, to whose laboratory she came almost as a blank slate. Without their time and willingness to share their experiences and advice, the student probably wouldn’t have been able to go on the internship. That is why Klára speaks of luck in the context of her involvement in the research group. Additionally, she also collaborates with the RECETOX center, where she is currently studying.

“We also collaborate with Associate Professor Petra Bořilová Linhartová, as she was open to the project and willing to help us with some aspects of the analysis. So, I am also visiting RECETOX to process some samples; it’s all incredibly well connected,” Klára smiles.

Klára is somewhat proof that it’s never too late to change or expand your research focus. In her first year of high school, she was involved more in the humanities, and spent a year at the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, and when she decided to write her High School Professional Work (SOČ), it was at the Faculty of Law, MUNI. According to her, she engaged in natural sciences more in her spare time.

“I jokingly say that law led me to natural sciences. Sometimes I feel there’s a certain dogma: Law is a dry subject. But I don’t agree with that. I really enjoyed the process of thinking and considering many different aspects of my topic. Later, I even compared the legal system to some biological system and international judicial cooperation to cellular signaling pathways. Thou, this might be a bit too much for some people. What I always enjoyed the most were the discussions that my supervisor occasionally organized. There were high school students, masters, PhD students, judges, or even the head of the department, but then you were mostly alone, reading and writing. That’s why I thought natural sciences might suit me a bit more, I was drawn to it. And even though I hesitated because of my rather humanities background, whether to take this step and enroll in the Faculty of Science, now I know it was the right decision. My scattered interests have certain advantages, but also disadvantages. I feel like I have a lot to catch up on, but at the same time, I wouldn’t change anything in retrospect. The important thing is to have interest and enthusiasm. When this is combined with the guidance of more experienced people and their enthusiasm, really beautiful things can happen,” says the student.

Although she plans to continue her research at the Faculty of Medicine, she also wants to fully dedicate herself to her new studies at RECETOX. Her goal is to get the most out of it both theoretically and practically. She sees the Environment and Health program as another piece of the puzzle that complements her scientific work and offers a different perspective.

“I was originally interested in environmental physiology and the impact of external factors, i.e., the exposome, on living organisms. However, in the laboratory, I work on other projects that deal with the regenerative mechanisms of teeth and their growth. For this, we use genetically modified mice, advanced microscopy, and various molecular and histological methods. This research is mainly in the field of developmental biology. However, RECETOX and my field of study offer me a slightly different perspective, and that’s what I enjoy about it. My current goal is to gain as much practical knowledge as possible, get to know different branches of biology and chemistry, and generally broaden my horizons. I would like to do my master’s in the field of developmental biology. The main goal of all this is simply to be able to do science as well as possible in the future. But first, I have to finish my bachelor’s,” Klára laughs."