Increased growth rate and amikacin resistance of Salmonella enteritidis after one‐month spaceflight on China’s Shenzhou‐11 spacecraft

Abstract

China launched the Tiangong‐2 space laboratory in 2016 and will eventually build a basic space station by the early 2020s. These spaceflight missions require astronauts to stay on the space station for more than 6 months, and they inevitably carry microbes into the space environment. It is known that the space environment affects microbial behavior, including growth rate, biofilm formation, virulence, drug resistance, and metabolism. However, the mechanisms of these alternations have not been fully elucidated. Therefore, it is beneficial to monitor microorganisms for preventing infections among astronauts in a space environment. Salmonella enteritidis is a Gram‐negative bacterial pathogen that commonly causes acute gastroenteritis in humans. In this study, to better understand the effects of the space environment on S. enteritidis, a S. enteritidis strain was taken into space by the Shenzhou‐11 spacecraft from 17 October 2016 to 18 November 2016, and a ground simulation with similar temperature conditions was simultaneously performed as a control. It was found that the flight strain displayed an increased growth rate, enhanced amikacin resistance, and some metabolism alterations compared with the ground strain. Enrichment analysis of proteome revealed that the increased growth rate might be associated with differentially expressed proteins involved in transmembrane transport and energy production and conversion assembly. A combined transcriptome and proteome analysis showed that the amikacin resistance was due to the downregulation of the oppA gene and oligopeptide transporter protein OppA. In conclusion, this study is the first systematic analysis of the phenotypic, genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic variations in S. enteritidis during spaceflight and will provide beneficial insights for future studies on space microbiology.

Effects of Simulated Microgravity on the Physiology of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia and Multiomic Analysis

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Harnessing the Space Environment for the Discovery and Development of New Medicines

“…Although the bacterial adaptive response to space stressors will also include ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, this study is important as it raises the possibility of enhanced infection risk in an astronaut population whose immune system may be impaired. Thirdly, an increased growth rate and resistance to the gram-negative bacterium Salmonella enteritidis after a flight on Shenzhou-11 (1 month), a Chinese spacecraft in operation between October and November 2016, has been described (Zhang et al 2019). Interestingly the investigators found that resistance to the antibiotic amikacin may be attributable to down-regulation of the oligopeptide transporter OppA.…”

Novel Antimicrobial Cellulose Fleece Inhibits Growth of Human-Derived Biofilm-Forming Staphylococci During the SIRIUS19 Simulated Space Mission

“…Importantly, space flight conditions affect not only humans but also the microorganisms within spacecrafts, including the astronauts' microbiome (Jiang et al, 2019;Voorhies et al, 2019). Bacteria exposed to space flight conditions have been shown to respond with changes in cell morphology and cell wall thickness (Novikova et al, 2006;Zea et al, 2017), an increase in secondary metabolite and extracellular polysaccharide production (Mauclaire and Egli, 2010), increased growth rate, biofilm formation, enhanced virulence, and increased resistance to antibiotics (Rosenzweig et al, 2010;Kim et al, 2013;Taylor, 2015;Aunins et al, 2018;Fajardo-Cavazos et al, 2018;Urbaniak et al, 2018;Bai et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2019;Mora et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2019).…”