Slashdot: Bugs from outer space

[janestarz]

Today, in Your Daily Dose Of Slashdot, we feature Bugs from outer space:

Germs Taken Into Space May Come Back Deadlier
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday September 25, @08:43AM
from the just-what-we-need-down-here dept.
westlake writes: "Sounds like the plot for a B-movie, doesn't it? Germs go into space and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened. In a medical experiment, salmonella carried about the space shuttle in the fall of 2006 proved far more lethal to lab mice than their earth-bound source. 90% dead vs. 60% dead in twenty-six days, with half the mice dying at 1/3 the oral dose. Apparently 167 genes in the space-evolved strain had changed. The likely cause: In microgravity the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, and the cells adapted quickly to the new environment."

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Comments include:
"What would happen if bacteria was on a satellite for years and then came back to the Earth? Everybody has always assumed that it was meteors or bioweapons lab leaks that were causing zombie outbreaks, but it could just as easily be supergerms that are so highly evolved that they can control the dead!" - by an Anonymous

"So most likely the germs had their little hill turned upside down in micro-gravity and were forced to climb up to the top of a new one. Their landscape got turned upside down again when they came back down to Earth, and they ended up finding a bigger hill than the one they started on." - by s_p_oneil

"This was first documented in 1988 [imdb.com], but they don't want you to know about it." - by PixelScuba

"Another thing to consider: germs in space will be able to mutate repeatedly before re-introduction to the general population. This means that the defensive systems that normally adapt to handle them as the mutations arise (think: each strain of the common cold that ends up "going around" your local school/business) don't get a chance until the germ population is sizeable and has the mutated traits spread throughout.
What's the policy for de-bugging astronauts, anyway?" - by PlatyPaul

"It works the other way too. The outer-space-bacteria has lived and mutated in an environment without or with very few defensive system, to which it normally needs to adapt to handle them and manage to survive and proliferate. Thus the bacteria doesn't get a chance to keep it's knowledge in surviving when it come back to earth.
It's most likely to get pwnd by the first antibody or marcophage it encounters." - by DrYak

So, will we all be eaten by Spacebugs? Anyone remember that meteorite crash that caused a whole Mexican village to projectile-vomit?

Comments

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic Park ;) )wrote a book about it in the 90's. It's called "the Andromeda Strain". I loved the book as a kid, which makes this old news. :P

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

I read and liked that book too! Sadly, it's too long ago for me to actually remember what it was about.

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

It's about a killer virus from outer space! DUN-dunDUUUHN!!!
It's been more than 10 years since I read it, but as a teen I've seen the movie of which the script is 98% the book. Watching that was a weird experience. I knew exactly what people would say and what would happen next.

And about projectile vomiting after meteor contact: It's probably caused by either radioactive substances (not so likely) or gaseous compounds formed during the heat of the crash and meteor substances. Find a bacteria that can survive extreme heat. The biological threat is not really from something crashing onto earth, but from what astronouts and their equipment take back with them.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Agreed.
But I still think the comments are funny.

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

The zombie comments are real treasure. XD

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

It really sounded like radiation sickness indeed.

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

Gasses can make you sick too. Some nasty combustion products can be formed during fires, which makes it funny to see so many people gather to watch a house on fire thinking they are at a safe distance. Then they wonder why they don't feel that well when they go home. ;)

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... reading about the experiment, I don't think the Dutch Animal Ethical Committee would have agreed with it. LD50 experiments were banned for a reason. While bacteria can't be called chemical substances, the experiment sounds similar to an LD50 experiment. (Give animals a different dose of a substance and watch at which dose 50% dies.)
Luckily there's still the USA where you can't use embryos, but watching lab animals die* is okay. ;)

*) I need more information on the experiment to be able to say that for certain.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

TFA^*) says literally: "After 25 days, 40 percent of the mice given the Earth-bound salmonella were still alive, compared with just 10 percent of those dosed with the germs from space."

^*)TFA: 'The Fucking Article' (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GERMS_IN_SPACE?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT)

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... yes, but the LD50 ban was not about the numbers of animals that died, but the fact people waited for the animals to die which is unnecessarily cruel. So I wonder whether the mice died of salmonella poisoning or were killed when it became clear they would die of salmonella poisoning. It is a big difference between what would be a legal experiment over here or an illegal one.

I know a lot about legal issues surrounding laboratory animal use in the Netherlands, but I'm still curious how things are arranged in other countries.

[nokey.livejournal.com]

" Anyone remember that meteorite crash that caused a whole Mexican village to projectile-vomit?"
The meteorite in question made a hole deep enough to hit the ground water. Which was, because of natural causes, polluted with arsenic. The resulting vapor thrown up by the impact and the heat of the meteorite was full of arsenic, making the people living nearby and investigators vomit.
Read the article on the National Geographic web site (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-meteor-peru.html).

[webshark.livejournal.com]

Wist je dat we neusvleugels en de gaten aan de onderkant van onze neus hebben om te voorkomen dat spacedust en hun vriendjes er in kunnen vallen?

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Ik zie gelijk voor me hoe het alternatieve scenario zou zijn. Een mens met een neus die op zijn kop zit (zodat ook het snot er niet uit kan lopen) met twee enorme trompetachtige neusvleugels die dienen voor het opvangen van manna, fijnstof, en andere Nare Dingen die uit de lucht komen vallen.

[(Anonymous)]

Bwahahaha! Dat is naar als het regent! Dan verzuip je. :p

~Brenda~

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

En als je echt heel verkouden bent, stroomt je snot over.
En als je dan ook nog eens niest, regent het groene stukjes!