[meteorite-list] Rare New Microbe Found in Two Distant Clean Rooms

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 09:47:56 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201311061747.rA6HluGD014214_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-319

Rare New Microbe Found in Two Distant Clean Rooms
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
November 06, 2013

A rare, recently discovered microbe that survives on very little to eat
has been found in two places on Earth: spacecraft clean rooms in Florida
and South America.

Microbiologists often do thorough surveys of bacteria and other microbes
in spacecraft clean rooms. Fewer microbes live there than in almost any
other environment on Earth, but the surveys are important for knowing
what might hitch a ride into space. If extraterrestrial life is ever
found, it would be readily checked against the census of a few hundred
types of microbes detected in spacecraft clean rooms.

The work to keep clean rooms extremely clean knocks total microbe
numbers way down. It also can select for microbes that withstand
stresses such as drying, chemical cleaning, ultraviolet treatments and
lack of nutrients. Perversely, microbes that withstand these stressors
often also show elevated resistance to spacecraft sterilization
methodologies such as heating and peroxide treatment.

"We want to have a better understanding of these bugs, because the
capabilities that adapt them for surviving in clean rooms might also let
them survive on a spacecraft," said microbiologist Parag Vaishampayan of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the
2013 paper about the microbe. "This particular bug survives with almost
no nutrients."

This population of berry-shaped bacteria is so different from any other
known bacteria, it has been classified as not only a new species, but
also a new genus, the next level of classifying the diversity of life.
Its discoverers named it Tersicoccus phoenicis. Tersi is from Latin for
clean, like the room. Coccus, from Greek for berry, describes the
bacterium's shape. The phoenicis part is for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander,
the spacecraft being prepared for launch in 2007 when the bacterium was
first collected by test-swabbing the floor in the Florida clean room.

Some other microbes have been discovered in a spacecraft clean room and
found nowhere else, but none previously had been found in two different
clean rooms and nowhere else. Home grounds of the new one are about
2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) apart, in a NASA facility at Kennedy
Space Center and a European Space Agency facility in Kourou, French Guiana.

A bacterial DNA database shared by microbiologists worldwide led
Vaishampayan to find the match. The South American detection had been
listed on the database by a former JPL colleague, Christine
Moissl-Eichinger, now with the University of Regensburg in Germany. She
is first co-author of the paper published this year in the International
Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology identifying the new
genus.

The same global database showed no other location where this strain of
bacteria has been detected. That did not surprise Vaishampayan. He said,
"We find a lot of bugs in clean rooms because we are looking so hard to
find them there. The same bug might be in the soil outside the clean
room but we wouldn't necessarily identify it there because it would be
hidden by the overwhelming numbers of other bugs."

A teaspoon of typical soil would have thousands more types of microbes
and billions more total microbes than an entire cleanroom. More than 99
percent of bacterial strains, as identified from DNA sequences, have
never been cultivated in laboratories, a necessary step for the various
types of characterization required to identify a strain as a new species.

Microbes that are tolerant of harsh conditions become more evident in
clean room environments that remove the rest of the crowd.

"Tersicoccus phoenicis might be found in some natural environment with
extremely low nutrient levels, such as a cave or desert," Vaishampayan
speculated. This is the case for another species of bacterium
(Paenibacillus phoenicis) identified by JPL researchers and currently
found in only two places on Earth: a spacecraft clean room in Florida
and a bore hole more than 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) deep at a Colorado
molybdenum mine.

Ongoing research with Tersicoccus phoenicis is aimed at understanding
possible ways to control it in spacecraft clean rooms and fully
sequencing its DNA. Students from California State University, Los
Angeles, have participated in the research to characterize the newly
discovered species.

The California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, operates JPL for NASA.

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2013-319

[Image]
Novel Bacterial Genus Found Only in Spacecraft Assembly Clean Rooms

This microscopic image shows dozens of individual bacterial cells of the
recently discovered species Tersicoccus phoenicis. This species has been
found in only two places: clean rooms in Florida and South America where
spacecraft are assembled for launch. Spacecraft clean rooms are one of
the most thoroughly checked environments on Earth for what microbes are
present. The monitoring provides an indication of what species might get
into space aboard a spacecraft. The image includes a scale bar showing
that each of the bacterial cells is about one micrometer, or micron,
across (about 0.00004 inch). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Received on Wed 06 Nov 2013 12:47:56 PM PST