“Is there life on Mars?”To start off, thanks to David Bowie for the lyrics in thetitle o

“Is there life on Mars?”To start off, thanks to David Bowie for the lyrics in thetitle of this post. A few years ago I posted a discussion of an interestingissue – the idea of planetary protection, in the sense of protecting otherplanets from us (http://tinyurl.com/pwlscmo). Specifically, I noted that thereare possibly environments on Mars that may have already been contaminated byliving bacteria from Earth.So to answer David Bowie’s question, I think this image shows aclose relative of an organism that is alive on Mars today.This is an electron microscope image of a bacterium that wasjust discovered in a very unusual place; inside the clean rooms at the JetPropulsion Laboratory and Kennedy Space Center.When spacecraft are being constructed, they are built insiderooms that are as clean as we know how to make them. People go throughdecontamination when entering; any parts brought in are cleaned anddisinfected, areas are exposed to UV light constantly; we clean these rooms aswell as we know how to do without destroying everything inside. Unfortunately, bacteria outgun us.  There are thousands of bacterial specieseverywhere you look; in soil samples, in and on human bodies, everywhere. Anytime a human enters one of these rooms or a part comes in, it brings inpossible contaminants if they aren’t killed by those disinfecting techniques.According to the JPL press release, less than 1% of bacterial types have beencultured; grown in conditions where they could be studied and prepared for DNAextraction.This little bugger is a unique specimen. It was found insamples from the centers where spacecraft are constructed and tested livingquite happily. Those settings are difficult; lots of disinfectants, verylimited nutrient levels, and yet somehow this thing still survives.This bacterium is unique in other ways; it not only is a newspecies, it’s so distant from any known bacterium that it is an entirely newgenus as well. It’s called Tersicoccus phoenicis; Tersi is the latin word for“clean”.This bacterium probably fills a very specialized role in nature. It probablyevolved in such a way that it can tolerate extremely harsh conditions ofchemicals and lack of nutrients; maybe in a way that allows it to survivealongside more aggressive organisms without having to compete for resources.Whatever it was, this bacterium, and perhaps others like it, is well adaptedand able to survive in the extreme conditions found in NASA’s clean rooms. That robustness should raise red flags…because anything thatwas built in one of these clean rooms would likely contain some of these cellson it. That would include, of course, landers and rovers sent to Mars. Theseguys can survive on very limited nutrients, they don’t need oxygen from theair, they can survive heavy UV bombardment and extreme chemicals, and they’regrowing in places where we build spacecraft to send to other planets.It’s worth stressing again that the scientists at NASA andJPL do the best they can. Part of the reason why this bug is able to live thereis that there is nothing else to compete with – almost everything else is dead.Similarly, the reason why this bug was identified is that they do such anincredible, detailed job of looking to see what else is in there. But still,this bug exists in those clean rooms.So yeah, I think it’s a very safe assumption that you’relooking at a microscopic image of life on Mars. Not life that evolved on Mars;a very extreme bacterium that lives on Earth in the one place where it couldget a free ride to Mars. And I bet it was more than happy to survive that trip.-JBBImage credit: JPLhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/m/news/index.cfm?release=2013-319 -- source link

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