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Bacteria on theInternational Space Stationare evolve and changing in their strange orbital environment – but according to a raw discipline , they do n’t seem to be any more dangerous to humans .
That ’s good news for astronauts , as some previous research paint a picture that space travelling might verify microbes mutate into strains that are more harmful to citizenry .
The International Space Station
" There has been a quite a little of speculation about radiation , microgravity and the lack of ventilation and how that might affect livelihood being , including bacteria , " lead study writer Erica Hartmann , a biological design prof at Northwestern University , said in a assertion . " These are stressful , harsh conditions , " leading researchers to wonder if space travel would increase the betting odds that bacterium would evolve into so - called superbugs to survive .
Based on the new bailiwick , published today ( Jan. 8) in the journalmSystems , “ the solvent appear to be ' no , ' " Hartmann say .
In the study , researchers canvass desoxyribonucleic acid from two kinds of bacteria that had take a trip to the ISS : Staphylococcus aureus(which is found on peel and causes staph infections ) andBacillus cereus(which is present in digestive systems and soil and usually harmless ) . Both microbes were roll up from the ambient surround of the space station and plausibly hitched a drive to space on the skin of cosmonaut or inside their trunk . The results revealed that while the returned bacterium had mutated differently than their Earthbound counterparts , they had n’t developed any of the obvious genetical trait of superbugs . ( Superbugs are bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotic . ) [ Over ground : Day & Night from ISS ]
On Earth , the researchers say , bacterium routinely fall away from the human bodies they prefer to inhabit and undergo change to adapt to nonliving aerofoil . But investigator were especially interested that the penny-pinching quarters of space vehicle , where humans and bacterium partake the same melody and low spaces for months on end , might produce life-threatening changes .
It seems , however , that while the bacterium did change themselves to adapt to space , those changes did n’t produce any abnormalcy that would make them produce diseases that would be more infectious or difficult to plow .
This is safe news for tenacious - term spaceflight . WhileNASA ’s tight quarantine procedures before launch have made infective disease in spaceexceedingly rare , the prospect of an outbreak in a seal spacecraft speeding toward Mars remains alarming . So far , though , it seems that nothing about the place surround itself is working to make that bacterial risk any more fearsome — even if there areotherhealth issuesto care about .
in the first place publish onLive Science .
