PLANTS WILL BE A CRUCIAL COMPONENT FOR ASTRONAUT HEALTH AND WELL-BEING DURING ANY LONG-DISTANCE SPACEFLIGHT OR COLONIZATION MISSION: AS A SOURCE OF FOOD FOR REPLENISHING WATER AND PURIFYING AIR AS WELL AS PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL COMFORT. THE CHALLENGE IS TO UNDERSTAND HOW PLANTS RESPOND TO THE SPACEFLIGHT ENVIRONMENT TO ENABLE PLANTS TO THRIVE IN POTENTIALLY HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS. AS TECHNOLOGIES HAVE ADVANCED FOR GLOBAL GENE EXPRESSION TRANSCRIPTOME LEVEL RESEARCH HAS BECOME AN INTEGRAL PART OF EXPERIMENTS AND PROVIDES KNOWLEDGE OF GENE EXPRESSION RESULTING FROM THE CONDITIONS OF SPACEFLIGHT. STEADY STATE TRANSCRIPT ABUNDANCE QUANTIFIED BY RNASEQ IS FREQUENTLY USED AS MEASURE OF GENE EXPRESSION WITH THE IMPLICIT ASSUMPTION THAT TRANSCRIPTIONAL CHANGES UPON A TREATMENT (SUCH AS A STRESS) ARE INDICATIVE OF THE DOWNSTREAM RESPONSE. HOWEVER CHANGES IN MRNA ABUNDANCE DO NOT NECESSARILY LEAD TO CORRESPONDING CHANGES IN PROTEIN AND TRANSCRIPT AND PROTEIN ABUNDANCE ARE NOT HIGHLY CORRELATED. THE DATA FROM SPACEFLIGHT EXPERIMENTS BRIC20 (PI WYATT) AND PLANT SIGNALING (PI PERERA) SUGGEST THAT POST-TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATION PLAYS AN INTEGRAL ROLE IN GENE EXPRESSION DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPACEFLIGHT AND GROUND CONTROLS. THE DIFFERENTIAL EXPRESSION ABUNDANCE AND PHOSPHORYLATION OF TRANSLATIONAL MACHINERY IN SPACEFLIGHT LEADS TO THE OBVIOUS QUESTIONS: WHAT GENES ARE BEING POST TRANSCRIPTIONALLY REGULATED AND BY WHAT MECHANISM(S)? TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS PIS WYATT AND PERERA PLAN TO COMBINE EXPERTISE AND RESOURCES TO GENERATE COMPATIBLE MULTI-OMICS DATASETS AND PROVIDE A COMPREHENSIVE PICTURE OF TRANSCRIPTIONAL AND POST TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATION....