Updated project metadata. The International Space Exploration Coordination Group has set a roadmap whose long-range strategy envisions the first human settlements on Mars by 2040. In this scenario, finding ways to exploit the local resources for the provision of food, construction materials, propellants, pharmaceuticals is an urgent need. Plants are important resources for deep space manned missions because they produce phytochemicals of pharmaceutical relevance, are sources of food and perform photosynthesis, thus providing oxygen which is crucial in bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS). Growth analysis and plant biomass yield have been previously evaluated on Martian regolith simulants, but molecular studies, such as gene expression analysis and protein profiling are still missing. The present work aims at filling this gap by providing molecular data on a representative member of the Poaceae, Lolium multiflorum Lam., grown on normal soil and Martian regolith simulant (MMS-1). The molecular data were complemented with optical microscopy of root/leaf tissues and soil physico-chemical analyses.