Astronauts can soon grow veggies in outer space. This says a study released by Researchers from the School of Life Sciences at University of Hyderabad (UoH), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) identified four strains of bacteria which were isolated from the International Space Station (ISS) that could help plants survive in the outer space.
According to some experts from the team, they said that-
“During the deep-space missions, astronauts carry processed puree packets and cans for their survival. Now the astronauts can grow some of their food.”
A brief study about research
The researchers from UoH discovered that the new bacterial strains from different locations all around the ISS flights can possibly help in creating the ‘fuel’ to help plants grow and survive through such stressful situations in the outer space.
The bacterial strains belonging to the family ‘Methylobacteriaceae’ which were isolated from different locations aboard the ISS across two consecutive flights. While one strain was identified as Methylorubrum rhodesianum, the other three were previously undiscovered and belonged to an unknown novel species.
Genetic analyses revealed them to be closely related to Methylobacterium indicum. The researchers named the novel species as Methylobacterium ajmalii, to pay a tribute to one of the renowned Indian biodiversity scientist Dr. Ajmal Khan, who was once a Professor at Annamalai University.
The genome analysis of Methylobacterium ajmalii strains revealed the presence of genes that are involved in promoting and boosting plant growth even in undetermined conditions.
On the eminent discovery and based on the genomic data, the lead researches said that the strains might possess “biotechnologically useful genetic determinants that may help plants to grow in extreme places where resources are minimal or close to extinct”.
Also read- Albert Einstein’s Hand-Written Letter with Famous Equation E=mc2 Sold for $1.2 Million
The team behind research
Further experimental procedures are being done to prove that it could be a potential tool and one of the most helpful tool-kit for space farming. These research findings are a presented and compiled by the combined efforts and studies of three organizations from USA.
The research teams were led by Dr. Kasthuri Venkateswaran, NASA’s JPL, and CC Wang WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction with the major support of Professor Appa Rao Podile from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) with expertise on plant growth promoting bacteria and plant microbiome and Dr. Ramprasad CSIR-pool scientist.
UoH said in a release on Thursday, “The authors are looking forward to more exciting discoveries in collaboration with NASA’s JPL.” This research and the possible outcomes with the study material was published in a recent issue of Frontiers of Microbiology.
Also Read: Did you know the man behind NASA’s Ingenuity is an IIT-Madras alumnus Bob Balaram?
