Characterization of the total and viable bacterial and fungal communities associated with the International Space Station surfaces

Sielaff, Aleksandra Checinska; Urbaniak, Camilla; Mohan, Ganesh Babu Malli; Степанов, В. П.; Tran, Quyen; Wood, Jason M.; Minich, Jeremiah J.; McDonald, Daniel; Mayer, Teresa; Knight, Rob; Karouia, Fathi; Fox, George E.; Venkateswaran, Kasthuri

doi:10.1186/s40168-019-0666-x

Cited by 165 publications

(209 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency have been continuously monitoring microbes in the ISS. 1,6,7) The majority of microbes in the environments are hardly cultured under conventional culture conditions. 8,9) To understand the real microbial world, culture-independent approaches are required.…”

Section: Bacterial Monitoring In the Interna-tional Space Station (Iss)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial Monitoring in the International Space Station and Its Application on Earth

Ichijo

Shimazu

Nasu

2020

Biological & Pharmaceutical Bulletin

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The space habitat is a confined environment with a simple ecosystem that consists mainly of microorganisms and humans. Changes in the pathogenicity and virulence of bacteria, as well as in astronauts' immune systems, during spaceflight may pose potential hazards to crew health. To ensure microbiological safety in the space habitat, a comprehensive analysis of environmental microbiota is needed to understand the overall microbial world in this habitat. The resulting data contribute to evidence-based microbial monitoring, and continuous microbial monitoring will provide information regarding changes in bioburden and microbial ecosystem; this information is indispensable for microbiological management. Importantly, the majority of microbes in the environment are difficult to culture under conventional culture conditions. To improve understanding of the microbial community in the space habitat, culture-independent approaches are required. Furthermore, there is a need to assess the bioburden and physiological activity of microbes during future long-term space habitation, so that the "alert" and/or "action" level can be assessed based on real-time changes in the microbial ecosystem. Here, we review the microbial monitoring in the International Space Station-Kibo, and discuss how these results will be adapted to the microbial control in space habitation and pharmaceutical and food processing industries.

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Section: Bacterial Monitoring In the Interna-tional Space Station (Iss)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial Monitoring in the International Space Station and Its Application on Earth

Ichijo

Shimazu

Nasu

2020

Biological & Pharmaceutical Bulletin

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“…The prevention of crew infectious waterborne diseases is retained among the highest priorities particularly for long duration missions (Ott et al, 2014), since emergency resupply is unrealistic and recycled water could represent the only suitable source for the on-board activities. Most of the aquatic microorganisms found aboard the International Space Station (ISS) do not generally constitute a severe hazard for human health (Blaustein et al, 2019;Checinska Sielaff et al, 2019;Sobisch et al, 2019). However, they may threat astronauts with reduced immune response, mostly following the microgravity stress conditions (Garrett-Bakelman et al, 2019;Ott et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several cultivable microbial isolates obtained from spaceflights were mainly affiliated to Bacteria and Fungi (Bruce et al, 2005;Coil et al, 2016;Novikova et al, 2006). For the purposes of this review, it is worth noting that the analysis of the microbial cultivable fraction were likely to provide only a limited snapshot of the highly diverse community found on the ISS by cultivation-independent methods (Checinska Sielaff et al, 2019;Coil et al, 2016;De Middeleer et al, 2019;Ichijo et al, 2016;Lang et al, 2017;Mora et al, 2019;Morris et al, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Water and Microbial Monitoring Technologies towards the Near Future Space Exploration

Amalfitano¹,

Levantesi²,

Copetti³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Space exploration is demanding longer lasting human missions and water resupply from Earth will become increasingly unrealistic. In a near future, the spacecraft water monitoring systems will require technological advances to promptly identify and counteract contingent events of waterborne microbial contamination, posing health risks to astronauts with lowered immune responsiveness. The search for bio-analytical approaches, alternative to those applied on Earth by cultivation-dependent methods, is pushed by the compelling need to limit waste disposal and avoid microbial regrowth from analytical carryovers. Prospective technologies will be selected only if first validated in a flight-like environment, by following basic principles, advantages, and limitations beyond their current applications on Earth. Starting from the water monitoring activities applied on the International Space Station, we provide a critical overview of the nucleic acid amplification-based approaches (i.e., loop-mediated isothermal amplification, quantitative PCR, and high-throughput sequencing) and early-warning methods for total microbial load assessments (i.e., ATP-metry, flow cytometry), already used at a high readiness level aboard crewed space vehicles. Our findings suggest that the forthcoming space applications of mature technologies will be necessarily bounded by a compromise between analytical performances (e.g., speed to results, identification depth, reproducibility, multiparametricity) and detrimental technical requirements (e.g., reagent usage, waste production, operator skills, crew time). As space exploration progresses toward extended missions to Moon and Mars, miniaturized systems that also minimize crew involvement in their end-to-end operation are likely applicable on the long-term and suitable for the in-flight water and microbiological research.

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“…Being ubiquitous in the environment and isolated from a variety of extreme and built environments, fungi are compelling microorganisms to evaluate such adaptive responses (5)(6)(7)(8)(9). Further, fungal presence aboard spacecraft, including the International Space Station (ISS), has been documented (10)(11)(12). Of concern is the occurrence of potential human pathogens, such as Aspergillus fumigatus, the causal agent of invasive aspergillosis, in the ISS (1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of Spore Secondary Metabolites to UV-C Protection and Virulence Vary in Different Aspergillus fumigatus Strains

Blachowicz

Raffa

Bok

et al. 2020

mBio

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Fungi are versatile organisms which thrive in hostile environments, including the International Space Station (ISS). Several isolates of the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus have been found contaminating the ISS, an environment with increased exposure to UV radiation. Secondary metabolites (SMs) in spores, such as melanins, have been shown to protect spores from UV radiation in other fungi. To test the hypothesis that melanin and other known spore SMs provide UV protection to A. fumigatus isolates, we subjected SM spore mutants to UV-C radiation. We found that 1,8-dihydroxynaphthalene (DHN)-melanin mutants of two clinical A. fumigatus strains (Af293 and CEA17) but not an ISS-isolated strain (IF1SW-F4) were more sensitive to UV-C than their respective wild-type (WT) strains. Because DHN-melanin has been shown to shield A. fumigatus from the host immune system, we examined all DHN mutants for virulence in the zebrafish model of invasive aspergillosis. Following recent studies highlighting the pathogenic variability of different A. fumigatus isolates, we found DHN-melanin to be a virulence factor in CEA17 and IF1SW-F4 but not Af293. Three additional spore metabolites were examined in Af293, where fumiquinazoline also showed UV-C-protective properties, but two other spore metabolites, monomethylsulochrin and fumigaclavine, provided no UV-C-protective properties. Virulence tests of these three SM spore mutants indicated a slight increase in virulence of the monomethylsulochrin deletion strain. Taken together, this work suggests differential roles of specific spore metabolites across Aspergillus isolates and by types of environmental stress. IMPORTANCE Fungal spores contain secondary metabolites that can protect them from a multitude of abiotic and biotic stresses. Conidia (asexual spores) of the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus synthesize several metabolites, including melanin, which has been reported to be important for virulence in this species and to be protective against UV radiation in other fungi. Here, we investigate the role of melanin in diverse isolates of A. fumigatus and find variability in its ability to protect spores from UV-C radiation or impact virulence in a zebrafish model of invasive aspergillosis in two clinical strains and one ISS strain. Further, we assess the role of other spore metabolites in a clinical strain of A. fumigatus and identify fumiquinazoline as an additional UV-C-protective molecule but not a virulence determinant. The results show differential roles of secondary metabolites in spore protection dependent on the environmental stress and strain of A. fumigatus. As protection from elevated levels of radiation is of paramount importance for future human outer space explorations, the discovery of small molecules with radiation-protective potential may result in developing novel safety measures for astronauts.

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Characterization of the total and viable bacterial and fungal communities associated with the International Space Station surfaces

Cited by 165 publications

References 95 publications

Microbial Monitoring in the International Space Station and Its Application on Earth

Microbial Monitoring in the International Space Station and Its Application on Earth

Water and Microbial Monitoring Technologies towards the Near Future Space Exploration

Contributions of Spore Secondary Metabolites to UV-C Protection and Virulence Vary in Different Aspergillus fumigatus Strains

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