CQ1 Almost in space
von Mariana Cuevas Ramirez
A zero Gravity duty
How did gravity shape life? This is a question many scientists think about constantly. As coordinator from Goethe University Frankfurt, Professor Maik Böhmer is working to answer this question alongside Simon Wüest and his team within the Institute of Medical Engineering at the Hochschule Luzern, Dr. Christian Liemersdorf from the German Aerospace Center, and Cenibra, coming as close to true rocket science as it will probably ever get.
Recently, Maik Böhmer and this collaborative team successfully accomplished the first milestone of their research. Last month, the team was at Novespace Bordeaux in order to analyze 8,000 (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants and 20,000 stem-cell-delivered neurons through a parabolic flight campaign with the CaMPARI system.
The objective of this project is to analyze the behavior of these two under conditions of gravity change, through their calcium response to answer the starting question. Calcium acts as a signal inside individual cells, so when gravity causes changes in calcium, this can trigger a process within the cell, like membrane depolarization. This calcium signaling, together with hormones, also allows different types of cells to communicate with each other. Since these interactions involve many different cells, tissues and organs, single cells cannot be studied alone, they need to be studied in intact organisms. (Wüest Simon, 2025) This is why plants and neurons were used instead of single cells.
So instead of taking neurons and plants to space to find these zero gravities, the team placed the plants and neurons on an aircraft and created gravity-change conditions for three days. It must be mentioned that 8,000 plants are a significant amount, since typically, only approximately 20 plants could be analyzed previously, and this can make quite an impact since it enables more opportunities to study biological responses to gravity change.
Photo: Professor Maik Böhmer, 2026
After these three days of testing, the plants and neurons did not end their journey there, they were transferred to the microscope that enabled this complex analysis, the Yokogawa CQ1 high-content microscope, by which the team could use the Automated Cell Explorer software, to acquire high-resolution images and automatically identify root tips and neurons, respectively. Now the team has the exciting task of making sense out of these experiments (I would recommend staying tuned on their work).
There were many actors who participated in this research process, including the mentioned Universities and the Deutschefahrtagebtur in DLR, Novespace, and proudly, the Cenibra team.