Scientists have found potentially harmful bacteria on the ISS – RIA Novosti

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© Photo courtesy of the press service of the Federal Space Agency of Russia

MOSCOW, October 27 – RIA Novosti. The biologists analyzed the samples of dust collected on board the ISS, and concluded that the station entered a potentially dangerous bacteria that can cause severe illness in conditions of weightlessness, according to a paper published in the journal Microbiome.

Before sending it to the ISS to orbit or just all cosmonauts and astronauts are subject to rigorous medical monitoring, in which their body is cleaned of all hazardous and harmless microbes and other inhabitants of the microcosm. Such caution is partly due to the fact that biologists do not yet know how the microbes will carry the bacteria in conditions of weightlessness, the excess carbon dioxide, and cosmic rays and how they will react to a weakened immune system.

Kasturi Venkateswaran (Kasthuri Venkateswaran) of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (USA) and his colleagues tried to find the answer to this question by comparing it what germs are going in the dust on the walls of the ISS, with what bacteria live in similar places in the simulator of life on the space station on Earth.

© Photo: Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos)

After receiving samples of dust and matter filter from the ISS, the authors analyzed them at using the latest systems of extraction and decoding of DNA that allow find traces of the bacteria and to establish their tribal and family affiliations even the smallest scraps of DNA and so-called ribosomal RNA.

As it turned out, on board the ISS really lives a lot of bacteria, and their species composition is markedly different from what organisms are present in the models of the ISS to Earth. For example, the station has a large number of so-called actinobacteria, which include diphtheria and scabies, which makes them potentially dangerous for the inhabitants of the ISS.

On the other hand, on board the station, unlike its simulator in the world, there is almost no so-called Firmicutes, which include Staphylococcus pathogens of foot-and botulism, tetanus and other diseases. All of this suggests that different bacteria tolerate weightlessness and life in space is not the same way. This should prompt NASA to develop new guidelines for cleaning the body of astronauts and protection of cargo to the ISS, the scientists conclude.