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Drug resistant bacteria found on ISS mutating to become functionally distinct
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neom 2y agoNot a biologist so not sure if this is reasonable, but seems it might be cool to compare the evolution of them in space and on earth and then try to understand what stressors caused what adaptations? Maybe it could be an interesting way to understand the evolutionary process more. Either way, I suppose we need to figure this stuff out if we're going to become multiplanetary. Super cool research, here is the paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/pdf/40168_2024_Article_1777.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/pdf/40...
- foreverobama 2y ago[dead]
- leoh 2y agoThe bacteria gonna’ keep us from Mars
- codetrotter 2y agoSpace flu
- moomoo11 2y agoX Covid X Also its gamer tag
- senectus1 2y agowar of the worlds in reverse.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoremember how NASA had quarantines and all that wasteful and unnecessary things which Elon musk would never waste time or money on? maybe war of the worlds was a warning about private space exploration more than anything else. imagine being invaded by aliens with good protocols.
- pests 2y agoLets hope it doesn't dim our sun...
- Mhinoverse 2y agoI created an account just to say how much I love your comment. I just finished this book, and it was an incredible journey.
- wudangmonk 2y agoI can't recall this being the premise of any book I've read, please let us know the name of the book.
- gr2m 2y agoWhich book is it?
- stetrain 2y agoProject Hail Mary
- FredPret 2y agoI'm reading that book right now for the second time. It's even better than The Martian. It's kind of in the same spirit as Delta-V or Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez. Sci-fi with some of the details worked out.
- TheBlight 2y agoPretty sure the radiation will be a bigger deal.
- foota 2y agoTurns out we had the Fermi paradox wrong all this time, it's not the all intelligent space faring civilizations we had to fear, but space MRSA.
- baq 2y agoOh the Boeing paradox.
- kazinator 2y agoBacteria preparing for space by making themselves drug resistant highlights their misplaced priorities.
- zmgsabst 2y agoPerhaps their mechanism for “drug resistance” also resists damage from cosmic rays or similar space adaptation — and the drug resistance is merely a side-effect.
- benterix 2y agoThat makes studying that mechanism even more important.
- beerandt 2y agoIt's in the title, but the abstract doesn't mention anything specifically about drug resistance, just adaptation/ mutation in general. Unless I missed it. I think it might be a (bad journalistic attempt as a) general descriptor for the species/ strain of bacteria studied, but maybe I'm reading it wrong.
- cseleborg 2y agoThe strain of bacteria was described as "notoriously drug-resistant". It didn't sound to me like the bacteria became drug-resistant in space.
- Nevermark 2y agoOf all the strains of bacteria that we might give an opportunity to optimize for space survival, why would we pick something that is a threat to humans. Space travel involves humans in an inescapable environment, without access to many medical therapies, and with potentially compromises immune systems! [0] Seems like a strange choice. Future news: "Drug resistant bacteria impossible to purge from Starship Mars Flyby 1. Sick astronauts turn strange color, sweat strange substance. Want to come home, but have 90% of their journey ahead. Fearing their novel infection, NASA tells them "Don't come back!", sends them erroneous course corrections. Bacteria researchers from 2024 experiment, jubilant at this dramatic evidence of their success, request more funding and astronauts." [0] https://www.popsci.com/science/space-immune-system-t-cell-genes/ https://www.popsci.com/science/space-immune-system-t-cell-ge...
- im3w1l 2y agoSo this is the first discovery of an extraterrestrial species right, because that's pretty neat.
- hpeter 2y agoIt's not alien origin, it came from earth. Maybe it's post-terrestrial ?
- im3w1l 2y agoThe prefix extra- just means beyond/outside. It lives outside Earth (Terra) so it's extraterrestrial. Though if you said it's not diverged enough to be a separate species that would be a better objection.
- gertop 2y ago1. The ISS drags into Earth's atmosphere, anything happening there is earthly. 20,000km further you'd have a point. 2. That's your own interpretation of the word. The actual definition of extraterrestrial life is life that did not originate on earth.
- jraph 2y ago> The actual definition of extraterrestrial life is life that did not originate on earth. While I would not consider something that evolved on a space station around Earth as extraterrestrial, this seems a bit restrictive. This would rule out any life evolving from Earth material on Mars brought by a rover as extraterrestrial even million years later. Also, if we discovered life came from an asteroid, we might have to consider ourselves as extraterrestrial with such a definition. (though I would not know how to define the word)
- captainkrtek 2y agoSomewhat related given the isolation element, pretty interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/
- yosito 2y agoImagine that, life in different environments evolving and adapting to fit those environments... Someone should propose a theory about this, they could call it the Theory of Evolution.
- dailykoder 2y ago[flagged]
- Ygg2 2y agobollocks! Next you're going to claim birds are real, and we aren't trapped in Demiurge's Dungeon.
- livingsystems 2y agoOh crap, only problem though is the only observable science we've done on this kind of evolution left E.coli to remain as E.coli after 75000 generations (Lenski experiments), leaving no clue about how the simplest known living cell with some 400+ genes (at ~1k bases each roughly speaking) arose, unfortunately. But let's just call this evolution and pretend that it explains something of the goo-to-you type of evolution most people think about when talking about evolution!
- candiodari 2y agoWell, if that means Humans can't reasonably leave earth, it's going to suck.
- red-iron-pine 2y agohumans could just suck it up and, you know, make earth not suck like if we can't terraform terra, how tf are we doing that to a barren rock 1 year away with no atmosphere?
- vundercind 2y agoThe amount of free “capital” (if you will) for maintaining life that you get on Earth is truly enormous. The mind strains to imagine the costs of building and maintaining all that somewhere that has almost none of it, and is very far from Earth. Other planets are… kind super-duper terrible. Space itself is even worse.
- verisimi 2y agoThat article is so low on detail! There's basically just this statement: > Study findings indicate under stress, the ISS isolated strains were mutated and became genetically and functionally distinct compared to their Earth counterparts. The strains were able to viably persist in the ISS over time with a significant abundance. E. bugandensis coexisted with multiple other microorganisms, and in some cases could have helped those organisms survive. The bacteria changed (how, why, can we see?), they survived in space (plainly the original bacteria also survived long enough to evolve), and possibly adapted/coexisted with other (unnamed) microorganisms. And then they were brought back to earth to be studied.... That too surely impacts the study of 'bacteria in space'.
- se4u 2y agoDetails are in the actual paper, and its linked prominently but it take a few clicks to get there. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/ There's even a video abstract!
- thedrexster 2y agovideo abstract direct link (40.7MB mp4): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/bin/40168_2024_1777_MOESM8_ESM.mp4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/bin/40...
- verisimi 2y agoI've skimmed this, it makes no sense to me. There are some graphics. There are things like this: > The ISS genomes exhibited an average of 4568 genes, a significantly higher count than the average of 4416 genes found in the Earth genomes. Yes, 4568 is a significantly higher count than 4416. But if I took samples of this bacteria from different countries, would I see a similarly significantly different count? I've no idea.. is this even significant without this sort of comparison? I watched the video too. This really is just a bunch of stock footage, with the same info as the linked NASA article. Do others find this info to be compelling of anything? It seems that this could be a PR piece of some sort, for 'space science'. I don't get the significance.
- nabla9 2y agoThis is even worse than it sounds. Long periods in zero gravity impair astronauts' immune system. Astronauts experience skin rashes and upper respiratory symptoms from mild to difficult during long-duration spaceflights. New bacteria in a closed environment with immune-compromised people can be life threatening if they can't get back to the Earth. Pneumonia in space could kill. Gravity is used to clear lungs. Postural drainage https://www.physio-pedia.com/Postural_Drainage https://www.physio-pedia.com/Postural_Drainage positions help to keep lungs clear. Astronauts drowning in their own fluids one after another would kill long range manned missions for NASA.
- lupusreal 2y agoIt seems easy to prevent a disease found on the ISS from infecting deep space missions; just don't link the two up. Maybe those other missions will develop their own strains in time, but with fewer people coming and leaving it should be easier to keep the spacecraft clean and healthy by starting out that way. Also the ISS has been occupied for 23 years with this issue only becoming apparent recently, so that seems like a pretty good run.
- nabla9 2y agoISS is not special. Strains found on earth did not evolve into drug resistant variants. E. bugandensis is multi-drug resistant resistant on Earth variants too. You can use quarantine to guard against many virus infections, but bacteria that always gets into space with humans is persistent threat. It's annoying when near Earth, but Mars missions must learn how to deal with emergencies.
- dogtorwoof 2y agoI do wonder about cosmic radiation and it’s ability to cause mutations to DNA. Could be part of the reason why there’s increased resistance.
- nabla9 2y agoIt seems that microgravity itself increases resistance. Bacteria show enhanced growth, increased virulence, higher resistance to antibiotics, and increased biofilm formation in microgravity. https://theconversation.com/as-if-space-wasnt-dangerous-enough-bacteria-become-more-deadly-in-microgravity-141053 https://theconversation.com/as-if-space-wasnt-dangerous-enou...
- Neil44 2y agoThey should call this the Andromeda strain
- dtx1 2y agoDo you want an Andromeda Strain? This is how we get Andromeda Strains!
- p0w3n3d 2y agoDon't worry, Ford Prefect was from Andromeda and nothing happened...
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoWasn't something like this the basis for The Andromeda Strain? The twist at the end seems to indicate the ultimate source of the bug.
- downrightmike 2y agoNo, The whole thing starts when they launch a rocket outside of our atmosphere to collect samples and then it comes back down. That bacteria basically evolves to consume energy and evolve to different forms of energy. Like at first it is pulling apart minerals in rocks to eventually pulling plastic bonds apart. Eventually it becomes harmless because energy is abundant on Earth and it seems to be intelligent as it evolves very quickly, and it only kills people in the early evolutions (by accident) and doesn't end up killing the scientists in the lab. Or the rest of life on earth.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoCool. Thanks for the explanation. Been quite a while since I've seen the movie.
- amelius 2y agoHow many of our bacteria made their way to Mars?
- thebeardisred 2y agoIs the header image a screenshot of Windows Media Player?
- steakscience 2y agoNASA still running Windows 7
- whoiscroberts 2y agoWouldn’t this also mean that the bacteria is radiation resistant?
- steakscience 2y agoSpace bacteria. Is it over for humanity?