{"id":119449,"date":"2025-05-21T09:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T09:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/119449\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T09:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T09:40:09","slug":"mysterious-bacteria-with-unique-abilities-discovered-on-chinese-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/119449\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious bacteria with ‘unique abilities’ discovered on Chinese space station"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bact to the future.<\/p>\n

Chinese scientists discovered a novel strain of bacterium with \u201cunique abilities\u201d that allowed it to thrive on the Tiangong Space Station, according to a report.<\/p>\n

The newly named Niallia tiangongensis was isolated by taikonauts from surface hardware on the China Space Station, according to a paper from the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering<\/a> published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.<\/p>\n

The novel strain is closely related to the terrestrial bacterium Niallia circulans, which is found in soil, sewage, food and human stool \u2014 but exhibits several mutations that could prove beneficial in the study of life as it moves out into space, the paper claimed.<\/p>\n

Scientists said the novel strain \u201cdemonstrates a unique ability to hydrolyze gelatin suggesting that it can utilize gelatin as a substrate in nutrient-limited environments,\u201d according to the paper.<\/p>\n

Nialla t. further showed \u201cstructural and functional\u201d difference in two key proteins which \u201cmay enhance\u201d biofilm formation, oxidative stress response and repair radiation damage, scientists claimed.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe novel strain is closely related to a bacteria found in soil, sewage, food and human stool. Wikipedia\/CC BY-SA 4.0<\/p>\n

\"BacteriaBacteria in a petri dish similar to that swabbed with sterile wipes on China\u2019s Tiangong Space Station. ridvanarda \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

All of these unique formations, likely mutations of the earthly bacteria developed in space, make Nialla tiangongensis incredibly resilient and adaptable to the space environment, the paper stated.<\/p>\n

Taikonauts from the China Space Station Habitation Area Microbiome Program collected the novel strain in 2023 using a somewhat homespun protocol \u2014 sterile wipes to swab the surface of the station and returning the frozen wipes to Earth, South China Morning Post reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The program, called CHAMP, tracks microbial dynamics during long-term space operations, conducting research related to active substances, genetic resources, and metabolic functions of microbes, according to that report.<\/p>\n

Knowledge gleaned from these tests will be key for long-term, manned space flights, but also will be useful for medicine and agriculture, according to the report.<\/p>\n

A similar icky discovery was made on the International Space Station last year \u2014 when American astronauts discovered a mutated and drug-resistant<\/a> version of a common bacterium that is also commonly found in the human gastrointestinal tract, a study<\/a> showed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bact to the future. Chinese scientists discovered a novel strain of bacterium with \u201cunique abilities\u201d that allowed it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[44625,1493,1395,70,413,12769,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-119449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronauts","9":"tag-bacteria","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-space-program","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114545165874642672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}