A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS)
Abstract
Background: Modern advances in sequencing technology have enabled the census of microbial members of many natural ecosystems. Recently, attention is increasingly being paid to the microbial residents of human-made, built ecosystems, both private (homes) and public (subways, office buildings, and hospitals). Here, we report results of the characterization of the microbial ecology of a singular built environment, the International Space Station (ISS). This ISS sampling involved the collection and microbial analysis (via 16S rDNA PCR) of 15 surfaces sampled by swabs onboard the ISS. This sampling was a component of Project MERCCURI (Microbial Ecology Research Combining Citizen and University Researchers on ISS). Learning more about the microbial inhabitants of the “buildings” in which we travel through space will take on increasing importance, as plans for human exploration continue, with the possibility of colonization of other planets and moons. Results: Sterile swabs were used to sample 15 surfaces onboard the ISS. The sites sampled were designed to be analogous to samples collected for (1) the Wildlife of Our Homes project and (2) a study of cell phones and shoes that were concurrently being collected for another component of Project MERCCURI. Sequencing of the 16S rDNA genes amplified from DNA extracted frommore »
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Genome Center
- Science Cheerleader (United States); Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Biomedical Engineering
- Science Cheerleader (United States); Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States). The Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes; Scistarter.org (United States)
- Science Cheerleader (United States); Scistarter.org (United States)
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Biosciences Division; Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States). Dept. of Biological Sciences
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Inst. for Genomics and Systems Biology
- Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Genome Center; Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Evolution and Ecology; Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Medical Microbiology and Immunology
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Biological Systems Science Division
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1629391
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- PeerJ
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 5; Journal ID: ISSN 2167-8359
- Publisher:
- PeerJ Inc.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; 16S; Microbial ecology; Microbiology of the built environment; Microbiome; International space station
Citation Formats
Lang, Jenna M., Coil, David A., Neches, Russell Y., Brown, Wendy E., Cavalier, Darlene, Severance, Mark, Hampton-Marcell, Jarrad T., Gilbert, Jack A., and Eisen, Jonathan A. A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS). United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.7717/peerj.4029.
Lang, Jenna M., Coil, David A., Neches, Russell Y., Brown, Wendy E., Cavalier, Darlene, Severance, Mark, Hampton-Marcell, Jarrad T., Gilbert, Jack A., & Eisen, Jonathan A. A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS). United States. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4029
Lang, Jenna M., Coil, David A., Neches, Russell Y., Brown, Wendy E., Cavalier, Darlene, Severance, Mark, Hampton-Marcell, Jarrad T., Gilbert, Jack A., and Eisen, Jonathan A. Tue .
"A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS)". United States. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4029. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1629391.
@article{osti_1629391,
title = {A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS)},
author = {Lang, Jenna M. and Coil, David A. and Neches, Russell Y. and Brown, Wendy E. and Cavalier, Darlene and Severance, Mark and Hampton-Marcell, Jarrad T. and Gilbert, Jack A. and Eisen, Jonathan A.},
abstractNote = {Background: Modern advances in sequencing technology have enabled the census of microbial members of many natural ecosystems. Recently, attention is increasingly being paid to the microbial residents of human-made, built ecosystems, both private (homes) and public (subways, office buildings, and hospitals). Here, we report results of the characterization of the microbial ecology of a singular built environment, the International Space Station (ISS). This ISS sampling involved the collection and microbial analysis (via 16S rDNA PCR) of 15 surfaces sampled by swabs onboard the ISS. This sampling was a component of Project MERCCURI (Microbial Ecology Research Combining Citizen and University Researchers on ISS). Learning more about the microbial inhabitants of the “buildings” in which we travel through space will take on increasing importance, as plans for human exploration continue, with the possibility of colonization of other planets and moons. Results: Sterile swabs were used to sample 15 surfaces onboard the ISS. The sites sampled were designed to be analogous to samples collected for (1) the Wildlife of Our Homes project and (2) a study of cell phones and shoes that were concurrently being collected for another component of Project MERCCURI. Sequencing of the 16S rDNA genes amplified from DNA extracted from each swab was used to produce a census of the microbes present on each surface sampled. We compared the microbes found on the ISS swabs to those from both homes on Earth and data from the Human Microbiome Project. Conclusions: While significantly different from homes on Earth and the Human Microbiome Project samples analyzed here, the microbial community composition on the ISS was more similar to home surfaces than to the human microbiome samples. The ISS surfaces are species-rich with 1,036–4,294 operational taxonomic units (OTUs per sample). There was no discernible biogeography of microbes on the 15 ISS surfaces, although this may be a reflection of the small sample size we were able to obtain.},
doi = {10.7717/peerj.4029},
journal = {PeerJ},
number = ,
volume = 5,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Dec 05 00:00:00 EST 2017},
month = {Tue Dec 05 00:00:00 EST 2017}
}
Works referenced in this record:
Classification of heparinolytic bacteria into a new genus, Pedobacter, comprising four species: Pedobacter heparinus comb. nov., Pedobacter piscium comb. nov., Pedobacter africanus sp. nov. and Pedobacter saltans sp. nov. Proposal of the family Sphingobacteriaceae fam. nov.
journal, January 1998
- Steyn, P. L.; Segers, P.; Vancanneyt, M.
- International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology, Vol. 48, Issue 1
Defining the healthy "core microbiome" of oral microbial communities
journal, January 2009
- Zaura, Egija; Keijser, Bart JF; Huse, Susan M.
- BMC Microbiology, Vol. 9, Issue 1
The truth about metagenomics: quantifying and counteracting bias in 16S rRNA studies
journal, March 2015
- Brooks, J. Paul; Edwards, David J.; Harwich, Michael D.
- BMC Microbiology, Vol. 15, Issue 1
The Human Microbiome Project: A Community Resource for the Healthy Human Microbiome
journal, August 2012
- Gevers, Dirk; Knight, Rob; Petrosino, Joseph F.
- PLoS Biology, Vol. 10, Issue 8
Exploring Bacterial Diversity of Endodontic Microbiota by Cloning and Sequencing 16S rRNA
journal, July 2011
- Ribeiro, Adriana C.; Matarazzo, Flávia; Faveri, Marcelo
- Journal of Endodontics, Vol. 37, Issue 7
The ecology of microscopic life in household dust
journal, September 2015
- Barberán, Albert; Dunn, Robert R.; Reich, Brian J.
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 282, Issue 1814
Non-pathogenic Neisseria: members of an abundant, multi-habitat, diverse genus
journal, July 2015
- Liu, Guangyu; Tang, Christoph M.; Exley, Rachel M.
- Microbiology, Vol. 161, Issue 7
An Ordination of the Upland Forest Communities of Southern Wisconsin
journal, February 1957
- Bray, J. Roger; Curtis, J. T.
- Ecological Monographs, Vol. 27, Issue 4
Gut microbial markers are associated with diabetes onset, regulatory imbalance, and IFN-γ level in NOD Mice
journal, February 2015
- Krych, Ł; Nielsen, Ds; Hansen, Ak
- Gut Microbes, Vol. 6, Issue 2
An improved Greengenes taxonomy with explicit ranks for ecological and evolutionary analyses of bacteria and archaea
journal, December 2011
- McDonald, Daniel; Price, Morgan N.; Goodrich, Julia
- The ISME Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 3
Home Life: Factors Structuring the Bacterial Diversity Found within and between Homes
journal, May 2013
- Dunn, Robert R.; Fierer, Noah; Henley, Jessica B.
- PLoS ONE, Vol. 8, Issue 5
Continental-scale distributions of dust-associated bacteria and fungi
journal, April 2015
- Barberán, Albert; Ladau, Joshua; Leff, Jonathan W.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 112, Issue 18
Enterobacteriaceae associated with animals in health and disease
journal, December 1988
- Linton, A. H.; Hinton, M. H.
- Journal of Applied Bacteriology, Vol. 65
Architectural design influences the diversity and structure of the built environment microbiome
journal, January 2012
- Kembel, Steven W.; Jones, Evan; Kline, Jeff
- The ISME Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 8
Microbial shifts in the aging mouse gut
journal, December 2014
- Langille, Morgan GI; Meehan, Conor J.; Koenig, Jeremy E.
- Microbiome, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Microbial Characterization of Free Floating Condensate aboard the Mir Space Station
journal, February 2004
- Ott, C. M.; Bruce, R. J.; Pierson, D. L.
- Microbial Ecology, Vol. 47, Issue 2
NCBI reference sequences (RefSeq): a curated non-redundant sequence database of genomes, transcripts and proteins
journal, January 2007
- Pruitt, K. D.; Tatusova, T.; Maglott, D. R.
- Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 35, Issue Database
Home Life: Factors structuring the bacterial diversity found within and between homes (16S rRNA sequence data and metadata)
dataset, January 2013
- Dunn, Robert R.; Fierer, Noah; Henley, Jessica B.
- figshare
Reagent and laboratory contamination can critically impact sequence-based microbiome analyses
journal, November 2014
- Salter, Susannah J.; Cox, Michael J.; Turek, Elena M.
- BMC Biology, Vol. 12, Issue 1
Rapid Culture-Independent Microbial Analysis Aboard the International Space Station (ISS)
journal, October 2009
- Maule, Jake; Wainwright, Norm; Steele, Andrew
- Astrobiology, Vol. 9, Issue 8
FLASH: fast length adjustment of short reads to improve genome assemblies
journal, September 2011
- Magoc, T.; Salzberg, S. L.
- Bioinformatics, Vol. 27, Issue 21
International Space Station environmental microbiome — microbial inventories of ISS filter debris
journal, April 2014
- Venkateswaran, Kasthuri; Vaishampayan, Parag; Cisneros, Jessica
- Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Vol. 98, Issue 14
Microbial Astronauts: Assembling Microbial Communities for Advanced Life Support Systems
journal, February 2004
- Roberts, M. S.; Garland, J. L.; Mills, A. L.
- Microbial Ecology, Vol. 47, Issue 2
phyloseq: An R Package for Reproducible Interactive Analysis and Graphics of Microbiome Census Data
journal, April 2013
- McMurdie, Paul J.; Holmes, Susan
- PLoS ONE, Vol. 8, Issue 4
Home Life: Factors structuring the bacterial diversity found within and between homes (16S rRNA sequence data and metadata)
dataset, January 2013
- Dunn, Robert R.; Fierer, Noah; Henley, Jessica B.
- figshare
NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq): a curated non-redundant sequence database of genomes, transcripts and proteins
journal, December 2004
- Pruitt, K. D.
- Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 33, Issue Database issue
Survey of environmental biocontamination on board the International Space Station
journal, January 2006
- Novikova, Natalia; De Boever, Patrick; Poddubko, Svetlana
- Research in Microbiology, Vol. 157, Issue 1
Spatial distribution of marine airborne bacterial communities
journal, March 2015
- Seifried, Jasmin S.; Wichels, Antje; Gerdts, Gunnar
- MicrobiologyOpen, Vol. 4, Issue 3
An inter-laboratory study to investigate the impact of the bioinformatics component on microbiome analysis using mock communities.
text, January 2021
- O'Sullivan, Denise M.; Doyle, Ronan M.; Temisak, Sasithon
- Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Skin microbiota: a source of disease or defence?: Skin microbiota
journal, February 2008
- Cogen, A. L.; Nizet, V.; Gallo, R. L.
- British Journal of Dermatology, Vol. 158, Issue 3
Campylobacter jejuni: molecular biology and pathogenesis
journal, September 2007
- Young, Kathryn T.; Davis, Lindsay M.; DiRita, Victor J.
- Nature Reviews Microbiology, Vol. 5, Issue 9
The Personal Human Oral Microbiome Obscures the Effects of Treatment on Periodontal Disease
journal, January 2014
- Schwarzberg, Karen; Le, Rosalin; Bharti, Balambal
- PLoS ONE, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Basic local alignment search tool
journal, October 1990
- Altschul, Stephen F.; Gish, Warren; Miller, Webb
- Journal of Molecular Biology, Vol. 215, Issue 3, p. 403-410
QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data
journal, April 2010
- Caporaso, J. Gregory; Kuczynski, Justin; Stombaugh, Jesse
- Nature Methods, Vol. 7, Issue 5
Microbial Characterization during the Early Habitation of the International Space Station
journal, February 2004
- Castro, V. A.; Thrasher, A. N.; Healy, M.
- Microbial Ecology, Vol. 47, Issue 2
Four-year bacterial monitoring in the International Space Station—Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” with culture-independent approach
journal, April 2016
- Ichijo, Tomoaki; Yamaguchi, Nobuyasu; Tanigaki, Fumiaki
- npj Microgravity, Vol. 2, Issue 1
ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis by WICKHAM, H.
journal, June 2011
- Wilkinson, Leland
- Biometrics, Vol. 67, Issue 2
Defining the Normal Bacterial Flora of the Oral Cavity
journal, November 2005
- Aas, J. A.; Paster, B. J.; Stokes, L. N.
- Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Vol. 43, Issue 11
Reagent and laboratory contamination can critically impact sequence-based microbiome analyses.
text, January 2014
- Salter, Susannah; Cox, Michael J.; Turek, Elena M.
- Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Site and plant species are important determinants of the Methylobacterium community composition in the plant phyllosphere
journal, February 2010
- Knief, Claudia; Ramette, Alban; Frances, Lisa
- The ISME Journal, Vol. 4, Issue 6
Microbes inside—from diversity to function: the case of Akkermansia
journal, March 2012
- Belzer, Clara; de Vos, Willem M.
- The ISME Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 8
METAGENassist: a comprehensive web server for comparative metagenomics
journal, May 2012
- Arndt, D.; Xia, J.; Liu, Y.
- Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 40, Issue W1
Isolation of Moraxella spp. from horses with conjunctivitis in Southern Brazil
journal, April 2021
- Seeger, M. G.; Corrêa, L. F. D.; Clothier, K. A.
- Brazilian Journal of Microbiology, Vol. 52, Issue 3
Haemophilus haemolyticus: A Human Respiratory Tract Commensal to Be Distinguished from Haemophilus influenzae
journal, January 2007
- Murphy, Timothy F.; Brauer, Aimee L.; Sethi, Sanjay
- The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol. 195, Issue 1
Enterobacteriaceae associated with animals in health and disease
journal, December 1988
- Linton, A. H.; Hinton, M. H.
- Journal of Applied Microbiology, Vol. 65, Issue s17
Enterobacteriaceae associated with animals in health and disease
journal, December 1988
- Linton, A. H.; Hinton, M. H.
- Journal of Applied Microbiology, Vol. 65, Issue s17
Topographical and Temporal Diversity of the Human Skin Microbiome
journal, May 2009
- Grice, E. A.; Kong, H. H.; Conlan, S.
- Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5931
International Space Station environmental microbiome — microbial inventories of ISS filter debris
journal, April 2014
- Venkateswaran, Kasthuri; Vaishampayan, Parag; Cisneros, Jessica
- Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Vol. 98, Issue 14
Exploring Bacterial Diversity of Endodontic Microbiota by Cloning and Sequencing 16S rRNA
journal, July 2011
- Ribeiro, Adriana C.; Matarazzo, Flávia; Faveri, Marcelo
- Journal of Endodontics, Vol. 37, Issue 7
An improved Greengenes taxonomy with explicit ranks for ecological and evolutionary analyses of bacteria and archaea
journal, December 2011
- McDonald, Daniel; Price, Morgan N.; Goodrich, Julia
- The ISME Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 3
Ultra-high-throughput microbial community analysis on the Illumina HiSeq and MiSeq platforms
journal, March 2012
- Caporaso, J. Gregory; Lauber, Christian L.; Walters, William A.
- The ISME Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 8
Continental-scale distributions of dust-associated bacteria and fungi
journal, April 2015
- Barberán, Albert; Ladau, Joshua; Leff, Jonathan W.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 112, Issue 18
FLASH: fast length adjustment of short reads to improve genome assemblies
journal, September 2011
- Magoc, T.; Salzberg, S. L.
- Bioinformatics, Vol. 27, Issue 21
NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq): a curated non-redundant sequence database of genomes, transcripts and proteins
journal, December 2004
- Pruitt, K. D.
- Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 33, Issue Database issue
Classification of heparinolytic bacteria into a new genus, Pedobacter, comprising four species: Pedobacter heparinus comb. nov., Pedobacter piscium comb. nov., Pedobacter africanus sp. nov. and Pedobacter saltans sp. nov. Proposal of the family Sphingobacteriaceae fam. nov.
journal, January 1998
- Steyn, P. L.; Segers, P.; Vancanneyt, M.
- International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology, Vol. 48, Issue 1
Skin microbiota: a source of disease or defence?: Skin microbiota
journal, February 2008
- Cogen, A. L.; Nizet, V.; Gallo, R. L.
- British Journal of Dermatology, Vol. 158, Issue 3
Enterobacteriaceae associated with animals in health and disease
journal, December 1988
- Linton, A. H.; Hinton, M. H.
- Journal of Applied Bacteriology, Vol. 65
Defining the healthy "core microbiome" of oral microbial communities
journal, January 2009
- Zaura, Egija; Keijser, Bart JF; Huse, Susan M.
- BMC Microbiology, Vol. 9, Issue 1
A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS)
dataset, January 2017
- Lang, Jenna
- figshare
Works referencing / citing this record:
Pangenomic Approach To Understanding Microbial Adaptations within a Model Built Environment, the International Space Station, Relative to Human Hosts and Soil
journal, January 2019
- Blaustein, Ryan A.; McFarland, Alexander G.; Ben Maamar, Sarah
- mSystems, Vol. 4, Issue 1
Characterization of the total and viable bacterial and fungal communities associated with the International Space Station surfaces
journal, April 2019
- Checinska Sielaff, Aleksandra; Urbaniak, Camilla; Mohan, Ganesh Babu Malli
- Microbiome, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Quantitative evaluation of bioaerosols in different particle size fractions in dust collected on the International Space Station (ISS)
journal, August 2019
- Haines, Sarah R.; Bope, Ashleigh; Horack, John M.
- Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Vol. 103, Issue 18
Space Station conditions are selective but do not alter microbial characteristics relevant to human health
journal, September 2019
- Mora, Maximilian; Wink, Lisa; Kögler, Ines
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Transient invaders can induce shifts between alternative stable states of microbial communities
journal, February 2020
- Amor, Daniel R.; Ratzke, Christoph; Gore, Jeff
- Science Advances, Vol. 6, Issue 8
Longitudinal homogenization of the microbiome between both occupants and the built environment in a cohort of United States Air Force Cadets
journal, May 2019
- Sharma, Anukriti; Richardson, Miles; Cralle, Lauren
- Microbiome, Vol. 7, Issue 1
ANCHOR: a 16S rRNA gene amplicon pipeline for microbial analysis of multiple environmental samples
journal, May 2019
- Gonzalez, Emmanuel; Pitre, Frederic E.; Brereton, Nicholas J. B.
- Environmental Microbiology, Vol. 21, Issue 7
Inevitable future: space colonization beyond Earth with microbes first
journal, August 2019
- Lopez, Jose V.; Peixoto, Raquel S.; Rosado, Alexandre S.
- FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Vol. 95, Issue 10
Succession and persistence of microbial communities and antimicrobial resistance genes associated with International Space Station environmental surfaces
journal, November 2018
- Singh, Nitin Kumar; Wood, Jason M.; Karouia, Fathi
- Microbiome, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Ecology of sleeping: the microbial and arthropod associates of chimpanzee beds
journal, May 2018
- Thoemmes, Megan S.; Stewart, Fiona A.; Hernandez-Aguilar, R. Adriana
- Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 5, Issue 5
Comparative genomics of Bacteria commonly identified in the built environment
journal, January 2019
- Merino, Nancy; Zhang, Shu; Tomita, Masaru
- BMC Genomics, Vol. 20, Issue 1
Metagenomic Approaches for Understanding New Concepts in Microbial Science
journal, August 2018
- Alves, Luana de Fátima; Westmann, Cauã Antunes; Lovate, Gabriel Lencioni
- International Journal of Genomics, Vol. 2018
Pangenomic Approach To Understanding Microbial Adaptations within a Model Built Environment, the International Space Station, Relative to Human Hosts and Soil
journal, January 2019
- Blaustein, Ryan A.; McFarland, Alexander G.; Ben Maamar, Sarah
- mSystems, Vol. 4, Issue 1
Metagenomic Approaches for Understanding New Concepts in Microbial Science
journal, August 2018
- Alves, Luana de Fátima; Westmann, Cauã Antunes; Lovate, Gabriel Lencioni
- International Journal of Genomics, Vol. 2018
Comparative genomics of Bacteria commonly identified in the built environment
journal, January 2019
- Merino, Nancy; Zhang, Shu; Tomita, Masaru
- BMC Genomics, Vol. 20, Issue 1
Characterization of the total and viable bacterial and fungal communities associated with the International Space Station surfaces
journal, April 2019
- Checinska Sielaff, Aleksandra; Urbaniak, Camilla; Mohan, Ganesh Babu Malli
- Microbiome, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Longitudinal homogenization of the microbiome between both occupants and the built environment in a cohort of United States Air Force Cadets
journal, May 2019
- Sharma, Anukriti; Richardson, Miles; Cralle, Lauren
- Microbiome, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Simulated manned Mars exploration: effects of dietary and diurnal cycle variations on the gut microbiome of crew members in a controlled ecological life support system
journal, September 2019
- Dong, Hai-Sheng; Chen, Pu; Yu, Yan-Bo
- PeerJ, Vol. 7