Planetary Protection & Biosafety

Identification of Bacillus Species Isolated From Cleanrooms at NASA Johnson Space Center

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
Frontiers vis PubMed
May 8, 2025
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Identification of Bacillus Species Isolated From Cleanrooms at NASA Johnson Space Center
Astromaterials curation team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center continues to collect the bonus asteroid Bennu particles located outside the OSIRIS-REx TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head.– NASA

Bacteria are frequently isolated from surfaces in cleanrooms, where astromaterials are curated, at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC). Bacillus species are of particular interest because endospores can endure extreme conditions.

Current monitoring programs at JSC rely on culturing microbes from swabs of surfaces followed by identification by 16S rRNA sequencing and the VITEK 2 Compact bacterial identification system.

These methods have limited power to resolve Bacillus species. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is the current standard for bacterial identification but is expensive and time-consuming.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption – time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), provides a rapid, low-cost, method of identifying bacterial isolates and has a higher resolution than 16S rRNA sequencing, particularly for Bacillus species; however, few studies have compared this method to WGS for identification of Bacillus species isolated from cleanrooms.

Resolution of MALDI-TOF compared to whole genome sequencing for identification of Bacillus species isolated from cleanrooms at NASA Johnson Space Center, Frontiers vis PubMed

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Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻