Researchers sent salmonella bacteria on a journey on the space shuttle Atlantis. When they returned, it was discovered that they were stronger and much more deadly towards laboratory mice * 167 genes changed from the bacteria's exit to space until their return
Scientists wanted to see how space travel would affect bacteria - and got surprising results. According to a report by the Associated Press, they introduced a culture of Salmonella bacteria, known to be deadly, into a space shuttle trip in September 2006 of the space shuttle Atlantis (STS-115). The result - mice that ate bacteria that stayed in space developed the disease more strongly, and died faster than mice that were fed bacteria that stayed on Earth.
"Wherever humans go, the bacteria also go with them. Humans cannot be sinned." warns Prof. Cheryl Nickerson from the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccines at Arizona State University.
According to Nickerson, research and a deeper understanding of the changes in bacteria holds the potential to lead to new steps that can be taken against the causes of disease. Nickerson reported the results of the study in the Tuesday issue of the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
The researchers took bacteria from the same strain, and grew them, then they put half of the bacteria in a test tube and flew them in a shuttle and the other half remained for control on Earth. After the return of the shuttle, doses of different concentrations of bacteria were placed in the mice's mouths and they were tested again after 25 days.
40% of the mice that received salmonella bacteria and stayed on Earth were still alive, compared to only 10% of those infected with space salmonella. As for the quantities, to kill a mouse it was enough to have one third of the number of space bacteria compared to the number of bacteria left on Earth. The researchers discovered that 167 genes changed in the salmonella bacteria that flew into space.
Nickerson does not have an answer to the question of why the change occurred and why the bacteria became more deadly. This may have an indirect connection to the lack of gravity, she says. The bacteria that are used to being found in liquid are exposed to a smaller amount of liquid in space, due to the lack of gravity.
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If you ask me, before getting too happy with the results of such high virulence you should really test it with a bacteria strain that is not normally violent. It would be possible to take another bacterium such as E.coli which is a distant relative of salmonella and see if it becomes more virulent.
First!
If so, dear Mr. Bilizovsky - I am the one and the first person in your statistics who does not believe in evolution. I am, by the way, a complete atheist - in case you are wondering. The belief in evolution is the same as the belief in God and both seem to me to lack sufficient scientific basis to give them "I believe" credit.
Happy holiday
: )
And I don't believe there is a single person at all who does not believe in evolution. After all, its evidence is in every corner, and you have to be blind not to see it.
I can't believe that there are still modern scientists who believe in evolution, what happened to you that you paralyzed your brain activity or stopped your synaptic activity there?????????
My father, the editor of the website, protested that the spaceship should be launched down
They all went through advanced training with advanced extraterrestrial bacteria.
Studies have shown that studies cause death in laboratory mice.
So we will send Rafi Ginat into space, that will fix everything...
An exhaustive response from Ami Bachar.
Two things should be noted:-
The change in the HFQ protein may be the cause of the change.
In addition, Ami Bachar's comments should be checked, that the changes in the acceleration in the takeoff and landing are the ones that cause the change and not the delay in space. The last test can be done in a centrifuge.
The question of whether a flight into space will be fatal for the space pilots due to the mutations in the germs they carry in their bodies should be investigated as soon as possible. In addition, it will be necessary to return and quarantine the space pilots returning to Israel, as was customary in the first space flights.
There is no doubt that the experiment with the salmonella bacteria is not perfect and should be done with a selection of other bacteria and viruses.
Happy holiday
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Space Germs Could Yield Earthly Cures
By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
24 September 2007
Bacteria that have been launched into space become deadlier than their earthbound counterparts, according to a new study. The finding may provide fresh insights on how to combat bugs right here on terra firma.
Space agencies around the world are beginning to plan missions to the moon and eventually to Mars and beyond. During those missions, astronauts will be exposed not only to external dangers such as solar radiation and micrometeorites but also to internal hazards such as bacterial infection. For that reason, researchers want to learn more about how bacteria behave in space flight. For example, does weightlessness affect microscopic organisms in the same way it does humans and other living creatures?
To find out, researchers sent samples of Salmonella typhimurium, a common infectious bacterium used in lab studies, aboard the space shuttle Atlantis for 12 days in September 2006. They performed detailed genetic and protein-expression analyzes on the Salmonella samples after the specimens returned to Earth. Reporting online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team found that after a 2-week stint in space the microbes were three times more able to kill infected mice than were control samples that remained on the ground. The flight also changed the expression of 167 of the bacterium's genes, including one for a protein called Hfq, which could be the key molecule responsible for the increased virulence.
Microbiologist and lead investigator Cheryl Nickerson of Arizona State University in Tempe says the Salmonella's increased virulence is easily treated by antibiotics, but what's important about the study is that it revealed the cause of the change: The low gravity led to a condition called low fluid shear , in which the bacterium's liquid environment reaches a gentle but not absolutely still state, similar to what the bug encounters inside the body during infection. When the scientists duplicated low fluid shear in lab experiments on the ground, the Salmonella samples acted in many of the same ways they did aboard Atlantis. This insight should give researchers new ways to design therapies that could disrupt the Hfq protein and perhaps stop infectious agents like Salmonella dead in their tracks, says Nickerson. "We've [now] got a tremendous amount of data" on how low fluid shear affects bacterial responses, she says.
Space bioscientist Lynn Harper of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, agrees that the findings hold promise. The study provides solid evidence for medically important phenomena that were only hinted at in prior research, she says: "There is increasing evidence that space can provide important new tools for learning to fight certain diseases."
interesting. Accelerated evolution in space conditions? I would imagine that there is a certain internal logic in this since conditions of zero gravity are abnormal conditions for life that developed on Earth and may be a strain (stress) for an earthly organism. Following the strain, selection begins to operate at a higher rate in favor of certain mutants that are constantly being created naturally.
What the article does not say in detail is whether this change in the 167 genes is a change from the mother culture (which was frozen with the splitting of the populations) or a change from the space culture to the culture that remained on Earth? It is possible that the culture on Earth has undergone one or another modifications compared to the mother culture, several months since the salmonellae were sent into space, their return and analysis of the changes.
Moreover, on the face of it, it does not appear that being in space constitutes a special drive to create violent bacteria - except on an empirical level (with undisputed facts). I guess one of the main questions is in the design of the experiment: to what extent are all the other parameters really the same between the culture that remained and the culture that went into space? Did the stay in space cause changes? Maybe it was the takeoff that killed a large amount of bacteria due to a change in acceleration (centrifuge effect)? If it was this sort of thing that made mutants more violent, then the selection here is arbitrary. I wonder if on Earth the mutants will return to be less violent after some time.
Very interesting research that raises many questions.
Ami