Astrobiologists have uncovered new information about how spores from the bacteria Bacillus pumilusSAFR-032 survive after being deprived of water and exposed to extreme radiation. By comparing the bacteria to another closely related strain, they were able to identify candidate genes that could be responsible for the organism’s resistance to these extreme conditions.

B. pumilus is a bacteria that was isolated from the spacecraft assembly facility at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Understanding its ability to survive in extreme conditions is very important for planetary protection. When a spacecraft is sent to another world, every precaution must be taken to make sure that bacteria from Earth are not hitching along and contaminating the spacecraft’s destination. Understanding the radiation and desiccation resistance of B. pumilus will help ensure any spacecraft leaving Earth is free of these durable organisms.

These studies also inform astrobiologists about life’s adaptation and survival techniques more generally, helping to understand whether or not life as we know it could survive on worlds other than Earth, where environmental conditions are much different.

The research team has published two papers concerning this work. The first, “Candidate Genes That May Be Responsible for the Unusual Resistances Exhibited by Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032 Spores,” was published in the journal PLOS One .

The second paper, “An ICEBs1-like element may be associated with the extreme radiation and desiccation resistance of Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032 spores” was published in the journal Extremophiles .