http://www.qando.net/ - Bugs in space

When Salmonella typhimurium food bugs were flown in special flasks on the shuttle, they were found to alter the way they expressed 167 genes.

The bacteria were almost three times as likely to kill infected mice compared with standard samples held on Earth.

The study, presented in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is said to have important implications for astronauts going to the Moon or Mars.

S. typhimurium is one of the more difficult food bugs to treat with antibiotics, and long spaceflight missions would need to take care that good hygiene standards were maintained.

Wonder if there's an anti-bacterial application hiding somewhere in there (i.e. development in space)? Anti-viral?

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Perhaps this is more of a reflection on me, but I would be more concerned with the biological weapons ramifications of a discovery like this, as opposed to what good might be done with it.

Written By: NeoconNews.com
URL: http://www.neoconnews.com

This is not really a shock, bacteria increase expression of virulence genes depending on environment. For example Yersinia (the plague) is avirulent until it is in an environment with low iron and high temperatures (blood). Bacteria tend not to express these genes because they’re metabolically costly, and are selected against unless they give it some increase in environmental fitness. This is most likely what is going on here. Space increases stress and the stress leads to an increase in expression of virulence factors.

Written By: MadVeterinarian
URL: http://

This story made me thing of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj26N10Ymlg

Written By: jpm100
URL: http://

Are they going to call it the Andromeda Strain?

Written By: timactual
URL: http://

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