Tenacious bacteria flourish on space station, but they’re no more dangerous than Earth bugs – Space.com

Burkholderia cepacia, one of the bacterial species stumbled on on the potable water dispenser on the Global House Attach.

(Image: © Janice Haney Carr USCDCP)

It turns out that micro organism contaminating the ingesting water on the Global House Attach are no longer any additional dangerous than micro organism here on Earth. 

Micro organism hold flourished in put, rising within the potable water dispenser on the put put. But the 2 species of micro organism thriving on this dispenser are no longer any additional tainted  than closely connected microbes here on Earth, a recent look has stumbled on. 

In 2009, NASA establish within the water dispenser on the put put, but rapidly after, samples taken from the instrument showed that micro organism had taken up feature within the water. The 2 strains of micro organism — Burkholderia cepacia and Burkholderia contaminans — indecent no longer most interesting the dispenser, however the ingesting water itself. 

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These put microbes are fragment of a community of connected Burkholderia micro organism species which, on Earth, hold brought on lung infections and were in particular no longer easy to execute the usage of oldschool ways. While astronauts on the put put hold recurrently flushed the dispenser with an additional-strength cleansing solution, micro organism hold remained on the instrument, in step with an announcement. 

Researchers on this contemporary look, who sequenced the genomes of bacterial strains silent from the dispenser from 2010 to 2014, stumbled on that every person of the B. cepacia and B. contaminans bacterial strains were very equal and perhaps came from micro organism that were on the instrument earlier than it launched to position. 

Within the look, the researchers stumbled on that the micro organism residing on the put put were no extra dangerous than equal microbes on Earth, and if an astronaut were to accumulate a bacterial infection from these microbes on the dispenser, it’d be treatable with antibiotics, in step with the commentary. 

“In step with the records equipped here, it looks most likely that the 2 populations of Burkholderia mark within the ISS PWS must no longer extra virulent than those that may perhaps be encountered on planet,” the researchers talked about within the look. 

The work became detailed in a look printed Feb. 19 within the journal PLOS ONE.  

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