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>> The immune system is really important to
everyday life, fighting bacteria and viruses
every minute, every second.
And it's going to be essential in space to
be able to fight bugs and bacteria when people
are coming in and out of the station.
So it's going to be very important to find
ways to prevent infectious disease.
And the best way to prevent infectious disease
is definitely vaccine.
So we elected to use the flu vaccine.
So the way vaccine work is you basically inject
a piece of the virus that's harmless or bacteria
and this is recognized by specialized cells
that are called T cells that then are going
to prepare the immune system to react faster.
So next time you encounter this particular
virus or bacteria, it will completely block
you from really developing the disease.
So there is two aspects of this investigation.
One aspect is just to see, if the immune system
is going to react the same way in space versus
on the ground in a preventative way, you know?
It's a number of T cells that's going to be
recruited.
So the second aspect is to look at the qualitative
effect of this vaccination.
Look at the specific T cells that are recruited
by the body to fight against the flu only.
We are using the latest technology for sequencing
these genes in these particular T cells to
really identify each T cells in Mark and Scott
and try to see how they react to the flu.
The importance of this research that we are
doing with the twins is really to show how
the immune response is different on space
versus on Earth, and also to find a way to
personalize vaccine.
To study specific immune cells as they react
to the vaccine, and one day, we hope to be
able to do a vaccine that will be specific
of each individual -- Scott, Mark -- and will
have less side effect.
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