Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, episode 87,

Twin Study.

I'm Gary Jordan and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, NASA scientists, engineers, astronauts, also let you know the coolest

information about what's going on right here at NASA.

So today we're talking about one of the more famous studies conducted here at NASA in recent

years.

It's called the Twin Study. You may remember from March 2015 to

March 2016, now former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year in space with

Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. The one-year mission was to investigate

just what you think. What happens to the human body during and after a year in

microgravity? At the same time another study was being conducted with Scott

Kelly but this one brought in his twin brother Mark Kelly, also a former NASA astronaut.

This investigation, called the Twin Study, examined what happened to both Scott Kelly in space and Mark Kelly on Earth during the same period of time.

It was a dense study. It packed with 10 different investigations, 12 universities, different corporations

and government laboratories, all looking at the more subtle changes that may

occur within the human body during a long-duration spaceflight.

So with us to discuss the intricate details and even some of the recently published findings of this

investigation is Dr. Andy Feinberg and Dr. Steve Platts. Dr. Feinberg is the principal

investigator of one element of the twin study looking at

epigenetics. We'll get into what that means in this episode. He's based at

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