home News Biofilm-forming bacteria get ride on final space shuttle trip (on purpose)

Biofilm-forming bacteria get ride on final space shuttle trip (on purpose)

The last flight of the Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for early July and there’ll be some cool microbes aboardPseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are both biofilm-forming bacteria with serious health consequences, particularly in hospitals.  The researchers involved in this project are interested in the effects of microgravity on biofilm formation, and have some preliminary data from a previous shuttle trip that different bacterial species respond differently to changed gravitation.

I’m not sure if this work will have much relevance for hospitals themselves, but presumably will be important for future long-term manned space flights where having MRSA colonize the heating system would be less than ideal.

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David Coil

David Coil is a Project Scientist in the lab of Jonathan Eisen at UC Davis. David works at the intersection between research, education, and outreach in the areas of the microbiology of the built environment, microbial ecology, and bacterial genomics. Twitter

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