Microbiome profiling of feces from mice flown on the RR-10 mission

Following removal of hindlimbs, carcasses were wrapped in aluminum foil, preserved in the CryoChiller, and stored at -80 C or colder until return to Earth. In addition to the Flight group, three ground control groups were also part of the study: Basal (representing the pre-launch state), Vivarium (standard vivarium housing for the same duration of time as flight), and Ground (flight habitat in the International Space Station Environment Simulator, ISSES).

Twenty mice (10 of each strain) were included in each of these control groups (except Vivarium which included 12 of each strain). These were treated, euthanized and processed on the same schedule and in the same manner as the flight samples. At the end of RR-10 experiment, all frozen carcasses were partially thawed and fecal pellets were removed and preserved by flash freezing in LN2.

DNA was extracted, shotgun metagenome libraries generated, and libraries sequenced (target 10 M clusters at PE 250 bp). This dataset features WT samples from the Flight (n=3), Ground (n=5), Basal (n=10) and Vivarium groups (n=12), as well as p21-null samples from Flight (n=5), Ground (n=5), Basal (n=10) and Vivarium groups (n=12).