Rakesh Mogul, Gregory A Barding, Sidharth Lalla, Sooji Lee, Steve Madrid, Ryan Baki, Mahjabeen Ahmed, Hania Brasali, Ivonne Cepeda, Trevor Gornick, Shawn Gunadi, Nicole Hearn, Chirag Jain, Eun Jin Kim, Thi Nguyen, Vinh Bao Nguyen, Alex Oei, Nicole Perkins, Joseph Rodriguez, Veronica Rodriguez, Gautam Savla, Megan Schmitz, Nicholas Tedjakesuma, Jillian Walker
Spacecraft assembly facilities are oligotrophic and low-humidity environments, which are routinely cleaned using alcohol wipes for benchtops and spacecraft materials, and alkaline detergents for floors. Despite these cleaning protocols, spacecraft assembly facilities possess a persistent, diverse, dynamic, and low abundant core microbiome, where the Acinetobacter are among the dominant members of the community. In this report, we show that several spacecraft-associated Acinetobacter metabolize or biodegrade the spacecraft cleaning reagents of ethanol (ethyl alcohol), 2-propanol (isopropyl alcohol), and Kleenol 30 (floor detergent) under ultraminimal conditions...
April 19, 2018: Astrobiology