THE GENELAB DATA REPOSITORY IS A POWERFUL RESOURCE WITH WHICH TO DISSECT PLANT RESPONSES TO SPACEFLIGHT AT THE MOLECULAR AND GENETIC LEVEL. THE RESEARCH IN THIS PROPOSED GENELAB INNOVATION STUDY THEREFORE SEEKS TO CONTINUE AND EXTEND OUR CURRENT ANALYSIS OF THE GENELAB PLANT SCIENCE DATA THROUGH BIOINFORMATICS EXPERIMENTAL TESTS OF PREDICTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT OF APPROACHES TO FACILITATE DATA EXPLORATION AND RAPID SHARING OF ANALYTICAL TOOLS. THIS WORK DIRECTLY ADDRESSES GOAL 1 OF THE SPACE BIOLOGY PROGRAM BY CREATING NEW KNOWLEDGE OF HOW BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ADAPT TO SPACE . IN ADDITION THIS RESEARCH APPROACHES SOME OF GENELAB S GUIDING QUESTIONS AS TO HOW IMPLEMENTATION OF LARGE SCALE DATASET ANALYSES CAN HELP PRODUCE NEW INSIGHTS AND HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF SPACEFLIGHT ON BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. AIM (1): WE PROPOSE TO USE INFORMATICS TO ASK HOW SPACEFLIGHT ALTERS THE PLANT TRANSCRIPTOME AND PROTEOME USING GENELAB DATA. WE WILL THEN COMPARE THESE CHANGES TO RESPONSES TO OTHER STRESSES AND ENVIRONMENTS (E.G. PATHOGEN ATTACK OR LIGHT STRESS) WHERE LARGESCALE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE DATASETS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DEPOSITED OUTSIDE OF GENELAB. THESE DATASETS INCLUDE RESPONSES TO PARTIAL GRAVITY AND GRAVITROPISM-RELATED TRANSCRIPTOMES. INTEGRATING SUCH ANALYSES WITH ALLIED DATA SUCH AS QTL MAPS WILL ALLOW US TO SPECIFICALLY ASK HOW MANY OF THE SPACEFLIGHT-LINKED CHANGES MAY BE MEDIATED THROUGH ALTERED GRAVITY SENSING AND RESPONSE. OUR PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF ARABIDOPSIS DATA FROM BRICS 16-20 HAS REVEALED OXIDATIVE STRESS AND HYPOXIA AS MAJOR FLIGHT-RELATED STRESSES AND HAS TARGETED GENE FAMILIES RANGING FROM HEAT-SHOCK PROTEINS TO CELL WALL PEROXIDASES AS LIKELY KEY PLAYERS IN THIS SPACEFLIGHT RESPONSE NETWORK. THE MORE COMPREHENSIVE PROPOSED ANALYSIS WILL GREATLY STRENGTHEN THESE INITIAL FINDINGS AND EXPAND THE RANGE OF MOLECULAR MECHANISMS WE CAN DETECT. AIM (2): THE SECOND ELEMENT OF THE PROPOSED WORK WILL TAKE THE GENES DEFINED FROM THE INFORMATICS IN AIM 1 AND TEST THEIR FUNCTION BY PASSING THEIR MUTANTS THROUGH A SUITE OF PHENOTYPIC ASSAYS. ANALYSES WILL INCLUDE MORPHOMETRIC MEASUREMENTS OF GRAVTIROPIC THIGMOTROPIC AND CLINOSTAT GROWTH IN ADDITION TO DEVELOPMENT IN SHORT AND LONG-TERM HYPOXIA. THESE STUDIES WILL BE PERFORMED USING AUTOMATED IMAGE ANALYSIS TOOLS SUCH AS ROOTNAV ROOTTRACE AND CUSTOM R-SHINY APPS THAT ARE HIGHLY COMPATIBLE WITH RAPID SHARING OF DATA AND ANALYSES VIA THE CLOUD. INFERENCES FROM THESE GROWTH ANALYSES WILL BE COMPARED TO THOSE REVEALED BY QUANTITATIVE PCR RESULTS OF MARKER GENES IDENTIFIED FROM THE CORE SPACEFLIGHT OXIDATIVE STRESS HYPOXIA AND GRAVITROPISM TRANSCRIPTOMIC ANALYSES. AIM (3): GENELAB DATASETS ALSO OFFER THE OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS THE KEY CHALLENGE OF FACILITATING EXPLORATION OF THESE LARGE COMPLEX AND SPECIALIZED DATASETS BY NON-SPECIALISTS. THE GILROY LAB HAS A LONG-STANDING COLLABORATION WITH IPLANT/CYVERSE AND COLD SPRING HARBOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF RNASEQ ANALYSIS TEACHING TOOLS SUCH AS THE DNASUBWAY GREEN LINE AND THE COLD SPRING HARBOR DNA LEARNING CENTER. EXTENDING THESE APPROACHES TO THE SPECTRUM OF GENELAB S PLANT DATA WILL MAKE A SIGNIFICANT STEP TOWARDS PROMOTING ACCESS AND UNDERSTANDING. ONE FURTHER APPROACH TO INCREASING ACCESSIBILITY FOR THE NON-SPECIALIST THAT WE PROPOSE TO DEVELOP WILL BE THROUGH AN ONLINE TABLEAU OR QLIK-BASED APP. THESE TOOLS CAN BUILD HIGHLY INTERACTIVE DATA VISUALIZATION THAT ALLOWS NON-EXPERT USERS TO SEARCH ACROSS AND EXPLORE INTERCONNECTIONS WITHIN LARGE AND COMPLEX DATASETS. THE INITIAL DATA VISUALIZATION TOOL WE DEVELOP WILL CONTAIN ALL GENELAB ARABIDOPSIS DATA BUT WILL BE DESIGNED TO BE CAPABLE OF INTEGRATING WITH OTHER DATASETS TO GREATLY EXTEND THE REACH OF THE GENELAB RESOURCES.