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A panel of biologists reviewing the US space agency NASA's life science research programme has called for an end to protein crystallography experiments in space — one of the highest-profile research activities planned for the International Space Station.

The committee of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) also says that research into “basic animal and plant cell and developmental biology cannot be used to justify a space mission”.

The panel of seven scientists was chaired by Donald Brown, a developmental biologist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC. It was asked by ASCB president Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco to develop a view on life science research in space in the light of opposition voiced by some biologists.

The resulting report was passed unanimously by the society's governing council last month, and includes some of the most pointed criticism ever levelled at NASA research by a scientific body.

The panel called space-based experiments to investigate gravity-sensing organs “premature” until more basic research is done on the ground. The group saw potential value in NASA ground-based plant research, but said that space experiments in general should have to justify their great cost, considering that the space station “will be the most expensive and inflexible laboratory ever built”.

The harshest words were reserved for protein crystal growth in space, which NASA-funded researchers claim is useful in drug design. “No serious contributions to knowledge of protein structure or to drug discovery or design have yet been made in space,” wrote the panel. “This committee recommends that no further funds be spent on crystallization of proteins in space.”

Panel member Ursula Goodenough of Washington University in St Louis, a past president of the ASCB and a space station critic, said the group strayed somewhat from its territory of cell biology in judging the NASA crystallography work. But she says that the presence on the panel of experts such as protein researcher Stephen Harrison of Harvard gave the committee confidence in its conclusion. Other members were Anthony Mahowald of the University of Chicago, Elliot Meyerowitz of the California Institute of Technology, Christopher Somerville of Stanford University and Carnegie, and Andrew Staehelin of the University of Colorado.

Tim Roemer (Democrat, Indiana), the space station's chief opponent in the US House of Representatives, was due to hold a press conference this week to publicize the report as part of his annual attempt to cancel the station when it comes to a House vote. That effort is almost certain to fail, just as a similar attempt failed in the Senate last week by a vote of 66 to 33.

Although the ASCB report is unlikely to have any real effect on the fate of the station, which begins construction this year, it is embarrassing for NASA, whose administrator, Daniel Goldin, has enlisted biologists' support for space research.