Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Microbes in Space

 No, it's not alien life. It's Earth life. But three of the four strains of bacteria found living on the ISS were new to science.

These are soil bacteria that got up there as part of experiments to grow plants, and now we're studying the soil to find out what microbes thrive in microgravity. The fact that some of them were previously 'unknown' only says that we don't know as much as we could about things which live and thrive in soil.

The goal of sequencing is to find microbes that promote plant growth and also don't mind hanging out without gravity, pun intended. They may also show radiation tolerance.

One of the four strains turns out to be very nice for plants.

When it will get really interesting is when we find a microbe on the ISS that does not thrive when brought back to Earth, as that could indicate the first Earth organism to fully adapt to life "on the float."

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