Live Cell Imaging Under Hypergravity: The DLR Hyperscope

The medical research facility, :envihab, at the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine, performs ground-breaking research into the ways people adjust to extreme environments and stressful situations, such as living in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS). :envihab is home to the DLR Short Arm Human Centrifuge, which  is used to research the impact of increased gravity on humans and as a potential countermeasure against muscle and bone loss in space.

In order to allow microscopic observation of living cells under hypergravity, the DLR Short Arm Human Centrifuge was equipped with a ZEISS Axio Observer live cell imaging microscope to create the Hyperscope. This novel platform allows the study of cellular dynamics under increased mechanical loading in living cells and organisms.

One example of the work at the Department of Gravitational Biology at the DLR can be found in Lichterfeld et al. (2022). They report that hypergravity attenuates the reactivity of primary murine astrocytes with regards to cell shape, behavior and protein and gene expression. Normal astrocytes maintain CNS tissue homeostasis, but reactive phenotypes may go along with neurodegenerative diseases. Reactive astrocytes have beneficial functions during acute phases following neuronal injury, but later they show detrimental effects by effectively inhibiting neuronal regeneration. Dr. Liemersdorf and colleagues discovered that hypergravity did not induce a reactive phenotype, and were even was able to inhibit certain aspects of astrocyte reactivity.