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How An Andromeda Strain Might be Strained
An anonymous reader writes "For the world-record holder as the longest surviving bacteria in space [6 years, Bacillus subtillis], it turns out that among the multitude of dangers [cold, vacuum, UV, lack of nutrients, etc.] the greatest stress of all is intense ultraviolet radiation. In the next two years, new space station experiments are slated to test the panspermia hypothesis--also popularized in Robert Zubrin's "Entering Space", but dating back at least 150 years in the scientific literature. Recent balloon experiments, have rekindled alot of the controversy, but NASA Ames scientist, Rocco Mancinelli, concludes: "In my opinion, for a spore, it's quite likely.""
"I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole goddamn Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said shit about it."-- Pete Conrad
0-40C. (That's 32-104F for people who hate the French
Actually that would be Swedes, since the inventor of the International Standard for temperature was a Swedish scientist named Anders Celsius.
OTOH, I have a hard time believing that an organism that optimized its genome for surviving direct exposure to UV radiation would be much good at surviving in our bodies. I don't even know that there is a path through gene space to get there. Only speculation, of course - IANAMB ( I am not a microbiologist).
It seems an easier strategy would be to hide. You wouldn't need to be very far down inside a meteorite or chunk of space debris to escape UV.
Helium balloons want to be free.
A few centimeters of rock will sheild against most anything. Microbes have been found as deep as anyone has drilled in the earth- 8 miles, so there are probably lots of microes inside rocks.
Actually, UV radiation isn't an effective antibacterial measure at all. Unfortunately, UV radiation can easily be shielded - if the germs are hidden behind a barrier (ice, stone) which is thick enough to shield the radiation, they won't care. That's why UV is seldom used for desinfection - if you have germs inside a tool (e.g. an endoscope) or in larger clumps, desinfection will fail. Much better is radioactivity (gamma rays) or gases that are able to permeate plastics (e.g. ethylene oxide).
Simpler things are sometimes harder to kill. The Andromeda Strain was hard to kill because it was a simple thing which had adapted to an extremely harsh environment.
Similarly, prions -- the deformed proteins associated with Mad Cow and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies -- survive autoclaving. Bacteria break down in an autoclave, but not prions, which are much simpler things. Very worrisome, because autoclaving is the standard procedure for sterilizing surgical instruments.
Contrast this with complex things -- e.g. human beings -- which can be killed in a thousand simple ways.
More complex, more vulnerable.
I'm reminded of the "trans-warp drive" from one of the Star Trek movies, I forget which: Scotty shuts down the drive by heisting a few chips, and says with a smile: "The more they tinker with the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works."
-kgj
A lot of good information on that quote can be found on this site.
The correct spelling is 'subtilis' A non-pathogenic (except for a few odd-ball cases) gram-positive, sporulating prokaryote. So it acts as a model system for all sorts of nasties including anthrax.
:-)
The B. subtilis spores are *extremely* hardy and were very close (genetically) to the bugs that the one group claimed to have extracted from amber.
And the japanese eat a fermented soy product made by this guy (natto).
I worked on that damn bug for my PhD so it's a love/hate relationship.
This is just SO wrong in so many ways.
1) There are some things that a bacteria will never be resistant to. Physical attacks against their cell wall, for example.
2) The bacteria on Mir was not a bacteria. It was a fungus.
3) The fungus did not evolve. It was a common earth strain.
4) The fungus did not eat anything. It secreted a corrosive substance.
5) The fungus did not eat throught titanium. Mir was aluminum.
6) During periods of high solar activity, astronauts on the space station might get 30 millirems of radiation in a single day. On the other hand, on the surface we pick up 350 millirems from background, and another 150 or so from cosmic radiation in a year. So, ISS occupants do NOT receive the same amount in a day as they would get on the surface in a year.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Sounds like a prion, popularly believed to be the cause of mad cow disease et al. Prions are believed to be proteins that self-replicate using host DNA. They gestate over 20 or so years or so.
What about the bacteria found frozen in the polar
ice caps that "revived" when thawed?
It was hundreds of thousands (millions?) of years
old, and still viable!
I don't remember the specifics... just turn on
Discovery, TLC, or The Science Channel once in a
while, you'll stumble over it.
The popular beliefs of the limits of life are being
challenged all the time. Just look at the life
in/near the thermal vents in the deap ocean for
a comparison in the opposite direction.
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