Bacteria that Grows Better in Space than on Earth

Space is devoid of air and nutrients.  It's a vacuum that allows no life to exist outside of a sealed environment.  However, one of the many ongoing research projects in space is seeing how things fair in space that normally do well on earth.  For example, the human body, materials, and even small microorganisms are studied in space to determine the effect of space on each item.  And interestingly enough, bacteria don't really have a problem growing in a controlled environment in space.

"A lot of people as us 'why' we sent microbes into space," said Dr. David Coil, who is a lead author on this study and a microbiologist at UC Davis.  "Understanding how microbes behave in microgravity is critically important for planning long-term manned spacecraft but also has the possibility of providing new insights into how these microbes behave in human constructed environments on Earth."

After completing this experiment, however, one species of bacteria tested grew even better in space than on Earth.

Bacillus safensis, the bacteria that grew better in space, is found quite commonly here on earth.  In fact, its name is derived from its discovery on the outside of spacecraft in Florida and California.  Now this bacteria wasn't discovered when the spacecraft returned from space, it was discovered after assembly here on earth.  Its an aerobic Gram (+) bacteria (this means that the bacteria contains a thicker layer of peptidoglycan) who doesn't have any abnormal traits that differentiate it from any other bacteria on earth in terms of generic characteristics.

This bacteria, along with 47 other samples of microorganisms that were swabbed from multiple public locations as part of a nationwide citizen science project called Project MERCCURI, were sent up into space to be studied.  Most of not all of the organisms that were identified were determined to be normally found on the International Space Station (ISS).  However, it is completely unknown as to why Bacillus safensis grew 60% even better in space.

Granted, this discovery doesn't pave the way to cure cancer or anything of the sort.  However, the aspect that some bacteria can grow more efficiently in microgravity is a fantastic discovery.  From this, there is a possibility that we could isolate genes or specific features from this bacteria and use genetic engineering to grow other microorganisms or even food in microgravity.  Astronauts being able to grow vegetables and other foods within their ships as they travel through space could be a possibility if specific genes are isolated from within the genome of Bacillus safensis is a very cool thought.  Again, this is all speculation, but in the future of space travel and exploration, this could be a big discovery.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Alexiev, UC Davis (CC BY 4.0)


To read more about this experiment, check out the PeerJ article here:

http://static.peerj.com/pressReleases/2016/Press-Release-Coil.pdf

In addition, another news story about this discovery can be read here:

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-bacteria-space-earth.html