Bacteria starved in space grow better

Bacteria that flew aboard the STS-135 mission, shown landing, grew better under certain conditions than similar microbes grown on Earth.

NASA

Bacteria aboard the final mission of space shuttle Atlantis have given scientists a better understanding of the effects of microgravity on potentially dangerous microbes.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria were grown during the 12-day mission in 2011 and compared with bacterial colonies of the same species grown on Earth. Both the space-flown and Earth-based bacteria experienced an environment low in phosphate and oxygen. In the end, the bacteria experiencing the conditions under micogravity divided more often than the bacteria on Earth. When either phosphate or oxygen was increased, the bacterial colonies had about the same final cell count.

The results, which appear November 5 in BMC Microbiology, may help scientists and engineers combat the negative effects of bacterial growth in future space missions.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.