Gloeocapsa magma Are Out Of This World!

Gleocapsa magma is a very interesting species of cyanobacteria for different reasons. For one, they have the ability to form deeply pigmented outer coatings to protect themselves from UV exposure, almost equivalent to the protective capabilities of sunscreen. These are the photosynthetic bacteria that may inhabit your roofs and give them gross-looking black stains and make it really hard for you to clean your rooftops, but there’s more to them than meets the eye. These little guys aren’t just your silent roof killers. These cyanobacteria live on rooftops, feeding off limestone filler and nutrients trapped in moisture-rich shingles, and thrive in humid environments. But they have also been found to survive elsewhere – outer space!

Microbes survive a year and a half in space
Gloeocapsa magma

More than a decade ago, rocks taken from cliffs at a tiny English fishing village called Beer in Devon were placed on the outside surface of the European Space Agency’s technology exposure facility onboard the International Space Station (ISS). These rocks unsurprisingly contained a multitude of microbes, one of which happened to be Gloeocapsa magma. These rocks spent 553 days on the outside of the space station, meaning that the microbes contained in them had to endure extreme temperature changes and exposure to cosmic rays and ultraviolet light. Not only is the environment anaerobic, but the vacuum of space would have caused every drop of water contained in the rocks to boil away. This would have been enough to kill most of the microbes, except for Gloeocapsa magma! According to Professor Charles Cockwell of the Open University’s Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute (who conducted the experiments), part of the reason G. magma survived was that they likely formed multi-celled colonies that would protect the cells in the center. A thick cell wall and good DNA repair processes owing to the fact that the species is related to bacteria surviving in deserts and Antarctica could also be good reasons for why they survived. The experiment with the Beer rocks was one of many designed to understand the usefulness of bacteria to astronauts. The survival of bacteria in such hostile environments strengthens the hypothesis that meteorites and meteors carrying bacteria could seed life on other planets or even the moon!

Although several types of bacterial spores have been shown to be capable of surviving years in outer space, this was the first time that photosynthesizing bacteria were seen to survive for so long in space. According to Dr. Karen Olsson-Francis, another researcher at the Open University, these bacteria could be used in life-support systems to recycle almost everything. There is also the concept that if humans were to set up bases on Mars or the Moon, they could use these kinds of bacteria for “bio-mining”, that is, using them to extract potentially useful or important minerals from rocks.

An important part of space exploration is understanding what can or cannot grow on other planets and how we can use them if we ever decide to colonize those planets. The research on G. magma could very well help answer these questions!

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