It is possible that none of you heard about the Tersicoccus phoenicis. In fact, there are few who can tell that have seen it or that had it in hands. It isn’t a small mammal which lives in an isolated jungle or desert, nor a bacterium or an alga found inside natural environments with some very special characteristics, far away from any human trace.

This bacterium was found only twice in the Earth. Both times, besides, it was in very similar environments, that is, it was in two clean rooms used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) for the docking of its space devices, which are submitted to a strict clean-up and disinfection procedures (chemical disinfection, ultraviolet irradiation, etc.). Another intriguing fact is that these two rooms were separated by more than 4.000 km, one was in Florida and the other was in the French Guiana.

noticia_17.7.14

Bacterium Tersicoccus phoenicis. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The bacterium, a member of the family Micrococcaceae, has an almost spherical form, with a diameter of 0,001mm, aerobic, it is Gram-positive and doesn’t form spores. This last fact does it even more surprising, given that the bacterial spore serves for persists in highly adverse environment conditions. It is remarkable its capacity of persist in very poor nutrients environments and, because of this characteristic, it was given the label of “extremophile”, which it is shared with another bacteria that have the same characteristic of persist and grow up in almost abiotic conditions. From this bacterium, we only have two varieties, considering that it has isolated solely in two places.

Its origin is, undoubtedly, terrestrial. According to some opinions, these rooms exercised some class of “positive selection” for this bacterium in terms of persistence and ability to stay alive practically without nutrients. In the other hand, this bacterium correspond to a less common type that remain always “covered” by other bacteria numerically more important or metabolically more active, which displaced our Tersicoccus in all the intents we have made to isolate it in other conditions.

One thing is for sure, its genetic material has been studied and sequenced, because if any point some form of life (bacterial or viral, of course) arrived to the Earth inside some space device, it could be discard that we were the responsible for throw it in space in the first place and then get it back later.

In the same way, to avoid the contamination of other stellar bodies or planets, this bacterium has been used as a control to improve the sterilization mechanisms and methods of these so well controlled environments.

Although, it is true that life, in all its forms, eukaryotic but above all prokaryotic, doesn’t understand about controls.

But that, that’s another story.

About the author of this post:

Francesc Xavier Abad

Subscribe to Directory
Write an Article

Recent News

El diagnóstico genético neonatal mejor...

Un estudio con datos de los últimos 35 años, ind...

Más de 1.500 cambios epigenéticos en e...

Un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad Juli...

Tuneable reverse photochromes in the sol...

A new technique allows the design of solid materia...

Highlight

Eosinófilos. ¿Qué significa tener val...

by Labo'Life

​En nuestro post hablamos sobre este interesante tipo de célula del...

Un estudio de INCLIVA muestra el efecto ...

by INCLIVA

Han desarrollado un estudio para evaluar la correlación entre el teji...

Photos Stream