Just read a news article about how 3 completely new types of bacteria have been found on the international space station due to it’s isolation, if that’s the case then how did they get there if we have never observed them before? what created them?
In: Biology
I’m a soil microbiologist and don’t know anything about space bacteria. But my best guess would be: Lots of bacteria from many bacterial species are brought up into space by accident (it’s unavoidable, really). Most of the bacteria probably die in this new environment, but some can survive pretty harsh conditions including the vacuum of space or the inside of the space station. The ones that can survive continue to replicate, and bacterial DNA mutates very frequently as they replicate. So in a relatively short period of time, you have an isolated community of bacteria with a lot of differences in DNA compared to bacteria back on earth. Are these DNA changes functionally significant? Maybe, maybe not.
Outer space aside, If you isolated any strain of bacteria and had it replicate on its own for long enough, it would probably be considered a “new” species before long because the bacteria accumulate mutations and can’t swap DNA with any other strains/species. Because bacteria naturally mutate so quickly and swap DNA with each other all the time, we generally talk about bacteria at the Genus level and don’t fuss with getting as fine-scale as Species too much.
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