Cosmic kidney disease: an integrated pan-omic, physiological and morphological study into spaceflight-induced renal dysfunction.

Missions into Deep Space are planned this decade. Yet the health consequences of exposure to microgravity and galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) over years-long missions on indispensable visceral organs such as the kidney are largely unexplored. We performed biomolecular (epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, epiproteomic, metabolomic, metagenomic), clinical chemistry (electrolytes, endocrinology, biochemistry) and morphometry (histology, 3D imaging, miRNA-ISH, tissue weights) analyses using samples and datasets available from 11 spaceflight-exposed mouse and 5 human, 1 simulated microgravity rat and 4 simulated GCR-exposed mouse missions. We found that spaceflight induces: 1) renal transporter dephosphorylation which may indicate astronauts' increased risk of nephrolithiasis is in part a primary renal phenomenon rather than solely a secondary consequence of bone loss; 2) remodelling of the nephron that results in expansion of distal convoluted tubule size but loss of overall tubule density; 3) renal damage and dysfunction when exposed to a Mars roundtrip dose-equivalent of simulated GCR.

Feeling for food: Can rostro-mental hair arrays sense hydrodynamic cues for foraging North Atlantic right whales?

North Atlantic right whales (NARWs; Eubalaena glacialis) possess an arrangement of fine hairs on the rostrum and chin that may be used for hydrodynamic sensing during feeding. These hairs occur across mysticete species and are known to possess adequate innervation in the subdermal follicle to support their consideration as sensory hairs (vibrissae). However, the small size of the hair structure with respect to the enormous scale of the animal's body has caused doubts regarding their utility and prompted speculation that the hairs may be vestigial or minimally functional. Here we show that NARW hairs occur in abundance on the leading surface of the head in a unique and characteristic arrangement. We consider the sensory hairs in context of the fluid environment in which this species forages and argue that the size of the hair is scaled to the size of the animal's small planktonic prey, thus suggesting that the hairs play an important role in the sensory ecology of these animals.