Toilet Microbes on the ISS Are Raising Concerns Among NASA Scientists

This September, NASA and ROSCOSMOS went back and forth over the cause of a leak at the International Space Station, though they may have been better served by directing their attention to the station’s toilets and exercise platforms. On Thursday, scientists reported that in those hard-to-reach, often grimy places, a different threat has been brewing.

It’s no secret, of course, that microbes inhabit the ISS. In fact, NASA tracks the communities that emerge in the station’s dust particles. But recently, scientists publishing in BMC Microbiology analyzed the genomes of five specific ISS microbes (in this case, drawn from an exercise platform and the ISS toilet in 2015) to see what they might be genetically capable of. The five strains, they report, share similarities with three strains on earth, all which all belong to one species: Enterobacter bugandensis.

Read More… Toilet Microbes on the ISS Are Raising Concerns Among NASA Scientists