A cell contains numerous proteins on its surface and in the cytoplasm that carry out a variety of functions. Maleimide – functionalized Graphene quantum dots (m-GQDs) have the ability to attach or “tag” both cell surface and intracellular proteins in the gravitational setting. Such quantum dots have photoluminescent properties, which can be utilized for tagging the cysteine residue on the proteins and hence in the bio-imaging applications of these proteins. This experiment proposes whether m-GQDs will have a stable binding to cellular proteins on Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) mammalian cells under the influence of microgravity. If this occurs, it can provide a wide variety of applications for studying the effects of micro gravity on a physiological system in the way proteins behave compared to a gravitational setting. The basic principle of this procedure can be further utilized to study many more cellular processes under the influence of microgravity by simply tracking these “tagged” cellular proteins under a fluorescence microscope
