About

Imara Perera is a Research Professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University. Her overarching research goal is to understand the molecular mechanisms governing plant responses to environmental stimuli and stress, with a particular focus on the phosphoinositide signaling pathway. Her work investigates membrane-associated inositol phospholipids and soluble inositol phosphates as means of signal interception and propagation within cells. Her current research emphasizes inositol pyrophosphates, a novel class of signaling molecules involved in energy and nutrient sensing in plants. She employs a multifaceted approach combining molecular genetics, biochemistry, physiology, and systems biology to explore these pathways and their global regulation. In addition to her molecular research, Perera studies seedling responses to microgravity and the spaceflight environment. Her laboratory has conducted experiments on the International Space Station, including 'Plant Signaling in Microgravity' and 'Plant RNA Regulation,' to analyze transcriptional profiles and gene regulation mechanisms in Arabidopsis seedlings under spaceflight conditions. Her research aims to understand how plants respond to space environments, which is vital for long-distance space travel and habitation. Her work contributes to the development of plants capable of withstanding stresses in space, thereby supporting human life support systems during extended space missions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Data Mining
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Engineering
• Physics
• Astronomy
• Biochemistry
• Chemistry
• Agronomy
• Data science

Selected publications

• Building and Operating a Low-Cost Elevated Carbon Dioxide Growth Chamber to Evaluate Microgreen Physiology under Spaceflight-Relevant CO<sub>2</sub> Levels

  Journal of Visualized Experiments · 2026-04-17

  article

  Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels aboard crewed spacecraft routinely exceed 3,000 ppm, significantly higher than atmospheric concentrations on Earth. Sustained exposure to extreme CO2 (exCO2) at levels above 3,000 ppm can alter plant growth, physiology, and nutritional composition. Yet, few laboratory systems can reliably reproduce these exCO2 concentrations. This protocol describes an accessible and low-cost method for constructing a benchtop growth chamber capable of maintaining stable CO2 levels above 3,000 ppm for plant experiments. The chamber is created by modifying a benchtop incubator to include airtight cable and gas fittings, an automated CO2 delivery and venting system, and integrated temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors. The system is controlled by an inexpensive single-board computer, using open-source Python code to maintain a target CO2 concentration by regulating solenoids that inject CO2 or vent the chamber in response to system readings. A custom passive wicking box sustains plant growth without requiring active watering, reducing the need to open the chamber and minimizing fluctuations in CO2 levels. Using this system, we successfully grew two microgreen species, radish (Raphanus sativus, a C3 plant) and amaranth (Amaranthus cruentus, a C4 plant), under "ambient CO2" (minimum 400 ppm) and "ISS-like exCO2" (minimum 3,000 ppm) conditions. The chambers maintained stable CO2 levels, temperature, and humidity throughout the 10-14-day growth cycles. This reproducible, spaceflight-relevant CO2 system provides an accessible tool for studying plant responses to extreme atmospheric environments and for preparing experiments for spaceflight.

  PublisherDOI

• Expanding frontiers: harnessing plant biology for space exploration and planetary sustainability

  New Phytologist · 2025-11-26 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Plants are critical for sustaining human life and planetary health. However, their potential to enable humans to survive and thrive beyond Earth remains unrealized. This Viewpoint presents a collective vision outlining priorities associated with plant science to support a new frontier of human existence. These priorities are drawn from the International Space Life Sciences Working Group (ISLSWG) Plants for Space Exploration and Earth Applications workshop, held at the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA) conference in September 2024. First, we highlight transformative advances gained from using the 'laboratory of space' in understanding how plants respond to gravity and other stressors. Second, we introduce a new crop Bioregenerative Life Support System (BLSS) readiness level (BRL) framework - extending the existing Crop Readiness Level (CRL) - to assist in overcoming challenges to establish resilient, sustainable crop production. Materializing the vision of plants as enablers of space exploration will require innovative approaches, including predictive modeling, synthetic biology, robust Earth-based analogue systems, and reliable space-based instruments to monitor biological processes. Success relies upon a unified international community to promote sharing of resources, facilities, expertise, and data to accelerate progress. Ultimately, this work will both advance human space exploration and provide solutions to enhance sustainable plant production on Earth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Strategies, Research Priorities, and Challenges for the Exploration of Space Beyond Low Earth Orbit

  Gravitational and Space Research · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract NASA's recent emphasis on human exploration of the Moon and, ultimately, Mars necessitates a transition from a focus of its research in the biological sciences from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to platforms beyond LEO. Fundamental research questions need to be addressed to enable humans to thrive in deep space. Work beyond LEO necessitates a shift in technology and the utilization of organisms in autonomous experiments, especially in the near term. The Beyond LEO Instrumentation & Science Series Science Working Group (BLISS-SWG) was established to provide NASA's Space Biology Program input on its strategy for developing research priorities and tools for exploration beyond LEO. Here, we present an abridged version of the first annual report of the BLISS-SWG, which is publicly available on the NASA Technical Reports Server. Seven priority areas and pertinent research questions were identified for research beyond LEO in the coming 2–5 years. Appropriate experimental organisms and technology development needs for research addressing these questions are summarized. The BLISS-SWG aims for this review to serve as a resource for the space biology and science and engineering communities as they develop research to understand risks and mitigation strategies for deep-space stressors on human crew, plants, and their microbiomes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conserved plant transcriptional responses to microgravity from two consecutive spaceflight experiments

  Frontiers in Plant Science · 2024-01-08 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Introduction Understanding how plants adapt to the space environment is essential, as plants will be a valuable component of long duration space missions. Several spaceflight experiments have focused on transcriptional profiling as a means of understanding plant adaptation to microgravity. However, there is limited overlap between results from different experiments. Differences in experimental conditions and hardware make it difficult to find a consistent response across experiments and to distinguish the primary effects of microgravity from other spaceflight effects. Methods Plant Signaling (PS) and Plant RNA Regulation (PRR) were two separate spaceflight experiments conducted on the International Space Station utilizing the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS). The EMCS provided a lighted environment for plant growth with centrifugal capabilities providing an onboard 1 g control. Results and discussion An RNA-Seq analysis of shoot samples from PS and PRR revealed a significant overlap of genes differentially expressed in microgravity between the two experiments. Relative to onboard 1 g controls, genes involved in transcriptional regulation, shoot development, and response to auxin and light were upregulated in microgravity in both experiments. Conversely, genes involved in defense response, abiotic stress, Ca ++ signaling, and cell wall modification were commonly downregulated in both datasets. The downregulation of stress responses in microgravity in these two experiments is interesting as these pathways have been previously observed as upregulated in spaceflight compared to ground controls. Similarly, we have observed many stress response genes to be upregulated in the 1 g onboard control compared to ground reference controls; however these genes were specifically downregulated in microgravity. In addition, we analyzed the sRNA landscape of the 1 g and microgravity (μ g ) shoot samples from PRR. We identified three miRNAs (miR319c, miR398b, and miR8683) which were upregulated in microgravity, while several of their corresponding target genes were found to be downregulated in microgravity. Interestingly, the downregulated target genes are enriched in those encoding chloroplast-localized enzymes and proteins. These results uncover microgravity unique transcriptional changes and highlight the validity and importance of an onboard 1 g control.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bridging the gap: parallel profiling of ribosome associated and total RNA species can identify transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of plants in spaceflight

  Journal of Plant Interactions · 2023-08-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  As plants are an essential component of sustainable life support systems, long-duration space missions will require a sophisticated understanding of plant adaptations to spaceflight and microgravity. For many years, transcriptional profiling of steady state mRNA abundances has been used as measure of plant adaptations to the space environment. However, measured changes in transcript abundances are often not reflected in corresponding changes in the proteome due regulatory processes governing translation. Translating ribosome affinity purification (TRAP) is a technique which selectively targets ribosome bound mRNAs for isolation and downstream sequencing. Comparing profiles of ribosome associated mRNAs with total mRNAs provides insight into the translatome and may more accurately inform on the cellular responses to the spaceflight environment. Toward that goal, this work describes a methodology developed ahead of the APEx-07 flight mission.

  PublisherDOI

• Meta-analysis of the space flight and microgravity response of the Arabidopsis plant transcriptome

  npj Microgravity · 2023 · 48 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Biology
  • Computational biology

  Spaceflight presents a multifaceted environment for plants, combining the effects on growth of many stressors and factors including altered gravity, the influence of experiment hardware, and increased radiation exposure. To help understand the plant response to this complex suite of factors this study compared transcriptomic analysis of 15 Arabidopsis thaliana spaceflight experiments deposited in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's GeneLab data repository. These data were reanalyzed for genes showing significant differential expression in spaceflight versus ground controls using a single common computational pipeline for either the microarray or the RNA-seq datasets. Such a standardized approach to analysis should greatly increase the robustness of comparisons made between datasets. This analysis was coupled with extensive cross-referencing to a curated matrix of metadata associated with these experiments. Our study reveals that factors such as analysis type (i.e., microarray versus RNA-seq) or environmental and hardware conditions have important confounding effects on comparisons seeking to define plant reactions to spaceflight. The metadata matrix allows selection of studies with high similarity scores, i.e., that share multiple elements of experimental design, such as plant age or flight hardware. Comparisons between these studies then helps reduce the complexity in drawing conclusions arising from comparisons made between experiments with very different designs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Regulation of inositol 1,2,4,5,6-pentakisphosphate and inositol hexakisphosphate levels in Gossypium hirsutum by IPK1

  Planta · 2023-01-25

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Arabidopsis telomerase takes off by uncoupling enzyme activity from telomere length maintenance in space

  Nature Communications · 2023-11-29 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  Spaceflight-induced changes in astronaut telomeres have garnered significant attention in recent years. While plants represent an essential component of future long-duration space travel, the impacts of spaceflight on plant telomeres and telomerase have not been examined. Here we report on the telomere dynamics of Arabidopsis thaliana grown aboard the International Space Station. We observe no changes in telomere length in space-flown Arabidopsis seedlings, despite a dramatic increase in telomerase activity (up to 150-fold in roots), as well as elevated genome oxidation. Ground-based follow up studies provide further evidence that telomerase is induced by different environmental stressors, but its activity is uncoupled from telomere length. Supporting this conclusion, genetically engineered super-telomerase lines with enhanced telomerase activity maintain wildtype telomere length. Finally, genome oxidation is inversely correlated with telomerase activity levels. We propose a redox protective capacity for Arabidopsis telomerase that may promote survivability in harsh environments.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Polyethersulfone (PES) Membrane on Agar Plates as a Plant Growth Platform for Spaceflight

  Gravitational and Space Research · 2022-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Plant biology experiments in microgravity face many challenges, among which are the constraints of the growth platforms available on the International Space Station (ISS). Protocols for preservation and sample return to Earth often limit efficient dissection of seedlings for downstream tissue-specific analysis. The Advanced Plant Experiment (APEx)-07 spaceflight experiment required a large quantity of dissectible, well-preserved seedlings suitable for omics analysis. During preflight tests, protocols were developed for using an agar-polyethersulfone (PES) membrane platform for seedling growth that allowed for seedling germination and growth aboard the ISS and rapid freezing to provide intact seedlings for dissection and extraction of high-quality DNA, RNA, and protein. Each component of the growth setup was carefully examined: membrane color, hydration and growth substrate, capacity for delayed germination, growth duration, harvest approach, and preservation pipelines were all individually optimized. Sterilized Arabidopsis seeds were adhered to PES membrane with guar gum. Membranes were laid onto 0.8% agar containing 0.5x Murashige and Skoog (MS) in 10 cm square Petri dishes and held at 4 °C until the experiment was actuated by placing the Petri dishes at room temperature. Seedlings were grown vertically for 12 days. PES membranes were removed from the agar, placed in the Petri dish lid, wrapped in foil, and frozen at −80 °C. Seedlings were dissected into roots and shoots and provided high-quality DNA, RNA, and protein. The system is simple, potentially adaptable for seedlings of multiple species, scalable and cost effective, and offers added versatility to existing ISS plant growth capabilities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• NASA GeneLab RNA-seq consensus pipeline: Standardized processing of short-read RNA-seq data

  iScience · 2021 · 49 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Data Mining
  • Computer Science

  With the development of transcriptomic technologies, we are able to quantify precise changes in gene expression profiles from astronauts and other organisms exposed to spaceflight. Members of NASA GeneLab and GeneLab-associated analysis working groups (AWGs) have developed a consensus pipeline for analyzing short-read RNA-sequencing data from spaceflight-associated experiments. The pipeline includes quality control, read trimming, mapping, and gene quantification steps, culminating in the detection of differentially expressed genes. This data analysis pipeline and the results of its execution using data submitted to GeneLab are now all publicly available through the GeneLab database. We present here the full details and rationale for the construction of this pipeline in order to promote transparency, reproducibility, and reusability of pipeline data; to provide a template for data processing of future spaceflight-relevant datasets; and to encourage cross-analysis of data from other databases with the data available in GeneLab.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Functional Characterization of Diphospho- and Triphospho-Inositol Phosphates in Plants

  NSF · $338k · 2011–2016

• Regulation of Phosphatidylinositol Phosphate Kinases: Plant-Specific PIPmodulins

  NSF · $488k · 2007–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Wendy F. Boss

  North Carolina State University

  35 shared

• Yang Ju Im

  North Carolina State University

  19 shared

• Ingo Heilmann

  Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

  15 shared

• Eric Land

  North Carolina State University

  14 shared

• Joseph J. Bass

  Versus Arthritis

  10 shared

• Nava Moran

  Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  9 shared

• Glenda E. Gillaspy

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  9 shared

• Heike Sederoff

  North Carolina State University

  9 shared

Labs

• Plant and Microbial BiologyPI

Education

• Ph.D., Plant Biology

  University of California, Berkeley

  2009

• M.S., Plant Biology

  University of California, Berkeley

  2005

• B.S., Botany

  University of California, Davis

  2003

Awards & honors

• REU Site: Integrative Microbial and Plant Systems (IMPS) (20…
• NASA GeneLab RNA-seq consensus pipeline: Standardized proces…
• Spaceflight Alters Post-Transcriptional Regulation (2019-202…