RRRM-2: Mouse Heart Transcriptional Profiling from ISS Mission

NASA's Rodent Research Reference Mission-2 (RRRM-2) collected bulk RNA sequencing data from the heart tissue of 160 female C57BL/6NTac mice. The study includes data from 5 old and 5 young mice across multiple control and experimental groups, including animals sacrificed on the International Space Station and after return to Earth. The dataset was last updated on March 13, 2026.

Use Cases

• Identify gene expression changes in heart tissue due to long-term spaceflight based on the ISS-T and LAR flight groups.
• Assess the impact of animal age on spaceflight adaptation by comparing data from 12-week-old and 29-week-old mice.
• Study recovery from spaceflight effects by analyzing differences between the ISS-T (on-orbit sacrifice) and LAR (returned live) groups.
• Control for environmental and hardware effects by comparing flight groups to ground, basal, and vivarium controls.

Strengths

• Includes data from 160 mice across multiple control and experimental groups, providing a robust experimental design.
• Directly compares spaceflight effects with three distinct control types (ground, basal, vivarium) for both ISS-T and LAR protocols.
• Explicitly controls for age as a variable by including equal numbers of young (12-week) and old (29-week) mice.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The ISS-T vivarium control young group has only 3 animals due to quality control issues, creating a sample size imbalance.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific analyses.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Bulk RNA sequencing (ribodepleted) of heart tissue from mice flown on the International Space Station's RRRM-2 mission.

Time Range

Data collection occurred during the RRRM-2 mission, with animals sacrificed after 55-58 days on-orbit or 32 days in space plus 24 days recovery.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 19:54:33.152460; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Data originates from an International Space Station mission, with ground controls and vivarium controls on Earth.