NASA Astronaut Performs First Ever Sample-to-Sequence Entirely Aboard Space Station
Microbes have a pretty bad reputation, and rightly so- I mean these guys are so annoying. And are not exactly pleasant pals of ours. Lurking all over in addition to being the reason behind a number of serious diseases. These “bad” microbes are the reason why we diligently disinfect our hands and wipe down our kitchen and bathroom sinks, as well as any other places where germs tend to congregate.
Furthermore, the risk of contamination is a big threat to astronauts living in tight quarters. NASA is now changing how they figure out exactly what that weird fuzzy mold is.
Durations for Mars missions are likely to range from 1.5 to 3 years, with 12 to 24 months of that time spent in transit between the planets, based on current propulsion technologies and planetary orbital dynamics. In response to spaceflight, the human immune response becomes dysregulated, and microbial pathogenicity can increase during spaceflight.
Beyond gene expression-mediated virulence changes, it is unclear how microbial populations would evolve, both in terms of population ecology and genetic mutations, over the course of a multi-year mission with increased exposure to ionizing radiation and microgravity
during transit.This ongoing microbial evolution could have a profound impact on crew health, as microbiome stability and dynamics are known to have significant effects on human health on Earth. Considering the time required to reach Mars, intervention from Earth during the course of a Mars mission will be limited to electronic communication, meaning that any analyses or monitoring to be performed must be done in situ.
NASA microbiologist Sarah Wallace says that contaminations of such biomaterial is pretty common aboard the International Space Station, but the exact nature of the contaminants isn’t always known. “We have had contamination in parts of the station where fungi was seen growing or biomaterial has been pulled out of a clogged waterline, but we have no idea what it is until the sample gets back down to the lab. On the ISS, we can regularly resupply disinfectants, but as we move beyond low-Earth orbit where the ability for resupply is less frequent, knowing what to disinfect or not becomes very important.”
Therefore now, NASA’s Genes in Space-3 project has allowed space-bound scientists to identify microbes on the station itself.
As a part of the Genes in Space-3 mission, astronauts on the space station last year touched a petri plate to surfaces on the space station and grew the bacteria found there into colonies, which NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson used to amplify and then sequence their DNA. In July 2016, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins became the first to sequence DNA in space, but this latest experiment was both the first time cells were transferred for analysis and the first time unknown organisms were identified in space.
To identify the microbes, NASA astronaut and biochemist Peggy Whitson first collected the samples and used the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to amplify and copy sections of the organism’s DNA.
The next step encompassed the sequencing and identifying of the DNA using the ISS’s handheld MinION device, but there was a problem: Hurricane Harvey. The storm was stopping the microbiologists at the Johnson Space Center from communicating with Whitson, but they managed to create a workaround by patching Wallace’s mobile phone directly into the ISS’ communication system. Thanks to this, Wallace was able to help guide Whitson through the sequencing.
During analysis, “Right away, we saw one microorganism pop up, and then a second one, and they were things that we find all the time on the space station,” Wallace said. “The validation of these results would be when we got the sample back to test on Earth.”
Whitson and the samples traveled back to Earth in September 2017, when the next phase of the Genes in Space-3 mission began. Scientists sequenced the microbes again on Earth and verified that each had been identified correctly.
This marks the first time a sample had been taken from space, and tested in space. The ability to test organic samples without having the ferry them back to Earth will greatly speed up the process of analysis. This could help with on-board disease diagnosis, as well quickening the identification of potentially alien life forms.
