Scientists have discovered a thriving ecosystem of ‘infectious organisms’ aboard the International Space Station.
Strains of the bacterium Enterobacter, similar to newly found opportunistic infectious organisms seen in a few hospital settings, have been identified on the International Space Station (ISS). The strains found in space were not pathogenic to humans, but researchers believe they should be studied for potential health implications for future missions, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology.
Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA investigated five strains of Enterobacter that were isolated from the space toilet and the exercise platform on the ISS in March 2015 as part of a wider effort to characterize the bacterial communities that live on surfaces inside the space station. To identify the species of Enterobacter collected on the ISS and to show in detail the genetic make-up of the individual strains, the researchers compared the ISS strains to all publicly available genomes of 1,291 Enterobacter strains collected on Earth.
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-iss-microbes-threat-astronaut-health.html