NASA Is Studying the Fungus Among Us Before Humans Take It To a New Planet (fastcompany.com)

From a new report: As humanity starts packing for a trip to Mars, NASA scientists are studying what not to bring along for the journey. In short, leave the fungus at home. NASA researchers created a closed habitat -- similar to where humans would have to live to survive long space travel or on a new planet -- and looked at fungi and how they grew, publishing their findings in the journal Microbiome. Fungi are "extremophiles" that can survive in the harshest conditions, but in the closed environment of a space station, they can wreak havoc. To see exactly what kind of fungi might colonize astronauts while they colonize Mars, researchers set up an Inflatable Lunar/Mars Analog Habitat, which simulates the closed environment of the International Space Station. They found that certain kinds of fungi increased in number while humans were living inside the habitat, and the weakened immune systems that come with living in a bubble make people more vulnerable to fungi.

Comments

Yeasts?

[gtwrek]

Pretty sure the article doesn't conclude "In short, leave the fungus at home". That's way too broad a generalization. (And while I'm not a microbiologist, I don't think even remotely possible).

In any event, who'd want to go to Mars without a good source of one's favorite beverage? Or bread? Beer/Wine/Bread and many other our favorite food and drinks all
depend on yeasts, which are in the fungus family.

Re:Wrong, Mars is safe from contamination

[MightyMartian]

It's self-sterilizing if we assume that life on Mars couldn't have found a way to deal with perchlorates. Extremophiles here on Earth demonstrate that life can evolve to survive in some pretty inhospitable and outright toxic environments.