Anyone who thinks that space stations are aseptic and completely clean environments is mistaken. The truth is that humans also transport their bacteria when they go to space. Strains found on the International Space Station (lSS), for example, have evolved to the point of becoming different from terrestrial versions. This is what a study published in the journal Microbiome.
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Unprecedented mutation
- The bacteria in question are strains of Enterobacter bugandensis. This is a pathogen that can only cause disease if the host is already fighting a disease or is immunocompromised.
- Recent research indicates that there are 13 strains on the space station.
- The bacteria is known to be multi-drug resistant, which means that several antibiotic treatments do not work to combat it. That’s why it’s important to understand how it behaves in space.
- Genetic work suggests that in such a unique environment, ISS strains could have mutated in several ways to become distinct from the ISS. E. bugandensis found on Earth.
- “We identify genes that are present exclusively in organisms associated with the ISS, but not in their terrestrial counterpart”, wrote the authors of the article.
Understanding how bacteria evolve in space is important for protecting astronauts’ health and for developing alternative approaches to combat them more effectively. According to the researchers, there is a lot of convincing evidence that shows how these strains are integrated into different bacterial communities, some of which are also opportunistic pathogens resistant to multiple drugs.
This coexistence may be another factor that helped organisms evolve successfully even in the low gravity, high radiation and high carbon dioxide environment of the ISS.
The information is from Iflscience.
