Bacteria was found by a team led by Indian American scientist at NASA Dr. Kasthuri Venkateswaran
A new species of bacteria found by an Indian American researcher-led team at NASA has been named after former Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.
The researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has named the new species of bacteria, which is found only on International Space Station (ISS) as Solibacillus kalamii.
According to the Microbiology Society, the newly found rod-shaped bacteria species, code named ISSFR-015T, “was isolated from a high-efficiency particulate arrestance filter in the International Space Station, and was characterized by polyphasic taxonomy.”
Indian American Dr. Kasthuri Venkateswaran, who led the research team, is a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He supports Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group.
According the scientist, once the new species was discovered naming it after Abdul Kalam was natural, as he is also a Tamilian aware of the contributions made by Dr. Kalam in space research.
An analysis of the new bacteria found that it has the highest similarity to bacteria such as Solibacillus isronensis, Solibacillus silvestris and Bacillus cecembensis, which are found on earth.
The discovery of new species of bacteria proves that new bacteria and fungi species can inhabit even in closed life-support system orbiting around the earth.
The artificial life support system onboard the ISS includes a distributed ventilation system that contains high-efficiency particulate arrestance (HEPA) filter elements to remove suspended particulate matter from the cabin atmosphere and protect humidity-control and air-purification equipment from debris accumulation and biofouling.
The new strain of bacteria was found in the HEPA filter which was installed in the ISS in January 2008, which came back to earth in May 2011, after which it was closely examined. The filter, which was operational inside the ISS for 40 months, remained untouched till 2013 until the Jet Propulsion Laboratory recovered it for microbial characterization in September 2013.
According to the researchers, an earlier study examining the HEPA filter found 41 bacterial strains were phylogenetically analyzed for their taxonomical affiliations.
After the analyzing 16S rRNA gene sequences of ~200 ISS strains that include 41 ISS-HEPA strains, some were shown to exhibit no clear phylogenic affiliation to any of the species.
The result of Polyphasic taxonomic test found that one of the ISS-HEPA strain ISSFR-015T is a novel species of the genus Solibacillus.