Hawaiian squid head to space to help understand astronauts’ health, thanks to a UH Manoa Ph.D. graduate

Some 128 baby Hawaiian bobtail squid with ties to the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory were sent into space this month to help scientists make breakthroughs to preserve astronauts’ health during long space missions.

NASA launched the squid into space as part of SpaceX’s 22nd resupply mission to the International Space Station. The primary purpose of the June 3 trip was to deliver thousands of pounds of cargo as part of a commercial resupply mission that also carried research supplies and vehicle hardware, including the first two new solar arrays.

The scientist investigating how spaceflight affects the squids is Jamie Foster, who completed her doctorate in 2000 at the University of Hawaii under the guidance of Dr. Margaret McFall-Ngai, whose squid studies go back to 1989.

“You train your students, and then they go off and they have to do something different than we are doing and they have to make their own way, and she certainly made her way,” said McFall-Ngai, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

Foster is now a full professor at the University of Florida and principal investigator for a NASA research program called UMAMI, which stands for Understanding of Microgravity on Animal-Microbe Interactions. The UMAMI project, which is 20 years in the making, is an offshoot of research that Foster began while studying in Hawaii and reflects her passion for space exploration.

“I’ve wanted to be an astronaut all my life, and I still do,” Foster said. “I might have to pay my own way someday if Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are successful in starting a commercial venture of space tourism.”

After getting her doctorate, Foster worked at the National Institutes of Health, then at NASA in California, followed by the University of Florida. All the while, Foster said, she was building and formulating her astrobiology and microbiology ideas.

Foster first sent squid into space in 2011 and received funding for the current squid project in 2018.

She returned to Hawaii a few months ago to work with McFall-Ngai for her latest squid space trip.

In this case, Foster collected a bobtail squid from Hawaii’s waters and hatched its babies, which were sent to space, in Florida.

Kewalo Marine Laboratory breeds the squid, which aren’t endangered and are plentiful in Hawaii’s waters, for use in experiments all over the world. The tiny squid, which are about 3 inches at adulthood, have a symbiotic relationship with Vibrio fischeri, a bioluminescent bacterium.

The squid have a light organ that feeds the Vibrio fischeri, allowing them to cast an adjustable glow that provides camouflage against moonlight and starlight, and remove their shadows, making them hard for predators to spot.

McFall-Ngai said, “There are about 4 million bacteria per square inch of sea water when the squid hatches. The species that is the symbiont is so rare, and yet somehow this animal is able to recognize its partner. The other bacteria, they don’t even let it get close.”

McFall-Ngai said when Foster was at the University of Hawaii, she was establishing the basis of how the bacteria drive the development of the tissue in normal gravity. Now, she said, Foster is asking how the squid develop under the conditions that an astronaut would experience.

“We have found that the symbiosis of humans with their microbes is perturbed (changes from the normal process) in microgravity, and Jamie has shown that is true in squid,” she said. “And, because it’s a simple system, she can get to the bottom of what’s going wrong.”

According to the UMAMI description, the experiment examines the molecular and chemical interactions between newly hatched bobtail squid paralarvae and the Vibrio fischeri, which are added to a cohort of the squid paralarvae during the spaceflight to colonize in the squid’s light organ. The UMAMI site said another cohort of the squid paralarvae is exposed to microgravity but is maintained without bacteria.

The squid, which are slated to return in July, are preserved over time to capture the changes in space environment under the presence or absence of their symbiotic bacteria.

Foster said understanding what is happening to the squid microbiome in space will help address some of the health problems that astronauts face, such as compromised immune systems and the potential for microbes to become more pathogenic.

“As astronauts spend more and more time in space, their immune systems become what’s called dysregulated. It doesn’t function as well. Their immune systems don’t recognize bacteria as easily. They sometimes get sick,” she said. “There are aspects of the immune system that just don’t work properly under long-duration spaceflights. If humans want to spend time on the moon or Mars, we have to solve health problems to get them there safely.”

McFall-Ngai said she’s proud of Foster and other groundbreaking scientists who have worked out of Kewalo Marine Laboratory, and of those who are still working there.

She said the current squid studies aren’t limited to space. McFall-Ngai said interest in experiments using the squid accelerated in 2006 after a breakthrough in next-generation sequencing allowed scientists “for the first time in the history of biology to understand how many different kinds of bacteria there are.”

“The physiology of this animal (squid) lends itself to studying nearly every aspect of symbiotic associations,” she said.

McFall-Ngai said other applications for the squid include studies targeted to understanding why treating human babies with antibiotics is harmful. They also are being used in studies of biofilm formation, which is associated with urinary tract infections with catheter use.

“A lot of what we do has to do with understanding of how you get your bacteria as you are born and how they influence development,” McFall-Ngai said. “How in the world does an animal tell the difference between a pathogen and a normal member — who is friend or who is foe?”