“One of many extra related environments to the ISS was within the isolation dorms on the UCSD campus through the COVID-19 pandemic. All surfaces had been repeatedly sterilized, in order that microbial signatures could be erased by the point one other individual would present up,” Benitez mentioned. So, one of many first options to the ISS microbial variety drawback he and his colleagues prompt was that they maybe ought to ease up on sterilizing the station a lot.
“The in depth use of disinfection chemical substances won’t be the perfect method to sustaining a wholesome microbial surroundings, though there’s actually loads of analysis to be performed,” Benitez mentioned.
House-faring gardens
He prompt that introducing microbes which can be helpful to human well being may be higher than always struggling to wipe out all microbial life on the station. And whereas some modules up there do have to be sterilized, conserving some helpful microbes alive could possibly be achieved by designing future spacecraft in a manner that accounts for a way the microbes unfold.
“We discovered that microbes in modules with little human exercise have a tendency to remain in these modules with out spreading. When human exercise is excessive in a module, then the microbes unfold to adjoining modules,” Zhao mentioned. She mentioned spacecraft could possibly be designed to place modules with excessive human exercise at one finish and the modules with little to no human exercise on the reverse finish, so the busy modules don’t contaminate those that want to stay sterile. “We’re in fact speaking as microbiologists and chemists—maybe spacecraft engineers have extra urgent causes to place sure modules at sure spots,” Zhao mentioned. “These are simply preliminary concepts.”
However what about crewed deep house missions to Mars and different locations within the Photo voltaic System? Ought to we rigorously design the microbial composition beforehand, plant the microbes on the spacecraft and hope this synthetic, closed ecosystem will work for years with none interventions from Earth?
“I’d take a extra holistic ecosystem method,” Benitez mentioned. He imagines sooner or later we might construct spacecraft and house stations internet hosting complete gardens with microbes that might work together with crops, pollinators, and animals to create balanced, self-sustaining ecosystems. “We’d not solely want to consider sending the astronauts and the machines they should operate, but in addition about all different lifeforms we might want to ship together with them,” Benitez mentioned
Cell, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.01.039
