bacteria grown in space becomes more deadly

reply to post by MajorMalfunction


Yeah, I refuse to take antibiotics, unless it's been a week and it feels like the illness is getting worse. I don't want to turn out like my dad who's too dependant on antibiotics that now he has to use those expensive 100 over dollar prescription bug killers.

I actually watched a quarky science show on germs sticking to things dropped on a dirty surface.
It isn't hard science, but basically they figured out that if the item is wet, or the floor is wet, then it picks up germs.
but if both are dry, then it actualy doesn't pick up germs.

And it doesn't matter if it is before 3 seconds or not.lol

But I have given stuff off the floor. My son is fine.

What do you think immune systems are for? It refines itself everytime the bacteria gets stronger. Our only weakness is viruses, which supposably are not alive ? WTF? Imo all viruses didn't come from this planet, well not from the life here.

Far-out, this is very interesting.. But I wonder how long it will take for the military to use this to engineer super bio-weapons?

Originally posted by MajorMalfunction
The bacteria must have somehow "known" that they would have an extremely hard time infecting people from the conditions they evolved in, so they became even more toxic yet.

Hypothetically speaking, how could one artificially mimic the environmental conditions in space that were used to cultivate the bacteria here on Earth?

Well, I reckon it would require zero-g, and who knows what kind of clean conditions. I don't know if they could properly replicate it in the gravity well.

Originally posted by MajorMalfunction
Well, I reckon it would require zero-g, and who knows what kind of clean conditions. I don't know if they could properly replicate it in the gravity well.

Assuming they couldn't properly replicate it in the gravity well, what would it take to do so?

Originally posted by Marked One
Assuming they couldn't properly replicate it in the gravity well, what would it take to do so?

Not much really except for a means of controlled gravity, radiation, and oxidative stress factors, etc. Bacterial growth at low gravity is not totally dependant on the adverse effects of stimuli. However, what it is dependant on is gene expression and in particular a gene called Hfq, which is a protein that both binds to an regulates RNA. It has been noted that at low gravity cells are able to increase the expression of this gene allowing for cellular growth and adaptation under these unusual circumstances. I could go on and on about this, so to save my breath just take a look at this (it's a fairly technical article, so if anyone has specific questions please ask) :

Society of Microbiology: Threat of Bacteria grown in Space

This might help answer your question:

Intraspecific differences in bacterial responses to modelled reduced gravity

[edit on 1-10-2007 by Jazzerman]

I'm assuming this would also work in a virus grown in zero gravity?

[edit on 6-10-2007 by Marked One]