Antagomirs drive diverging DNA damage repair and stress responses in spine versus eyes during simulated spaceflight

Spaceflight is associated with systemic effects, including central nervous system syndromes. To understand the effects from spaceflight syndromes, mouse spinal and ocular tissue were exposed to experimentally calculated galactic cosmic radiation and microgravity simulations. A cohort was also treated with antagomirs for let-7a-5p, miR-125b-5p, and miR-16-5p. In spinal tissue, there was altered expression of DNA damage repair, mitochondrial, and neurodegenerative genes in antagomir-treated groups. In ocular tissue, there were no changes in DNA damage repair, but lessened antioxidant enzyme and inflammatory gene expression in antagomir-treated groups. There were differential effects of how antagomirs modulated gene expression based on spaceflight stressor and tissue.