In 2024 NASA will execute Project Artemis, sending humans back to the moon to establish a permanent lunar base. However, space is inherently dangerous to human health. As part of my Ph.D, I'm researching how spaceflight impacts human health, and whether these impacts could potentially comprise current (Project Artemis) or future missions, ala Mars and beyond. Specifically, I'm examining how time aboard the International Space Station affects telomeres, the ends of human DNA, and the stability of DNA, for NASA's astronauts. My research takes the first look at the changes to telomeres in unrelated astronauts as a result of spaceflight, informing NASA policies and healthcare strategies for current and future missions.
This repository details the context of my research in the wider pursuit of space exploration; a brief overview of my laboratory methods; and an extensive walkthrough of my analysis using Python on telomere length data in astronauts. Why Python? The first pass of my analysis on the astronaut dataset was done in Excel and took ~1 month; my Python script takes about 30 seconds. This repository may serve as an accessory to our upcoming publications. The original analysis walkthrough is provided as a Jupyter notebook in this repository (above). An html rendered version of this notebook is here:
This analysis is intended for those interested in the code and/or science; jargon has been avoided wherever possible. Please enjoy and feel free to contact me.
Contact:
Jared Luxton
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredjamesluxton/
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