Effects of Ionizing Radiation and Long-Term Storage on Hydrated vs. Dried Cell Samples of Extremophilic Microorganisms
- A main factor hampering life in space is represented by high atomic number nuclei and energy (HZE) ions that constitute about 1% of the galactic cosmic rays. In the frame of the “STARLIFE” project, we accessed the Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator (HIMAC) facility of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) in Chiba, Japan. By means of this facility, the extremophilic species Haloterrigena hispanica and Parageobacillus thermantarcticus were irradiated with high LET ions (i.e., Fe, Ar, and He ions) at doses corresponding to long permanence in the space environment. The survivability of HZE-treated cells depended upon either the storage time and the hydration state during irradiation; indeed, dry samples were shown to be more resistant than hydrated ones. With particular regard to spores of the species P. thermantarcticus, they were the most resistant to irradiation in a water medium: an analysis of the changes in their biochemical fingerprinting during irradiation showed that, below the survivability threshold, the spores undergo to a germination-like process, while for higher doses, inactivation takes place as a consequence of the concomitant release of the core’s content and a loss of integrity of the main cellular components. Overall, the results reported here suggest that the selected extremophilic microorganisms could serve as biological model for space simulation and/or real space condition exposure, since they showed good resistance to ionizing radiation exposure and were able to resume cellular growth after long-term storage.
Document Type: | Article |
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Language: | English |
Author: | Ida Romano, Carlo Camerlingo, Lisa Vaccari, Giovanni Birarda, Annarita Poli, Akira Fujimori, Maria Lepore, Ralf Moeller, Paola Di Donato |
Parent Title (English): | Microorganisms |
Volume: | 10 |
Issue: | 1 |
Article Number: | 190 |
Number of pages: | 16 |
ISSN: | 2076-2607 |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:1044-opus-60767 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms10010190 |
PMID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35056640 |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Place of publication: | Basel |
Publishing Institution: | Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg |
Date of first publication: | 2022/01/16 |
Funding: | The STARLIFE project was supported by the MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Living in Space” (grant numbers: 15H05935 and 15K21745). R.M. was supported by the DLR grant FuE-Projekt “ISS LIFE” (Program RF-FuW, TP 475). |
Keyword: | IR microspectroscopy; SERS; STARLIFE project; biochemical fingerprinting; extremophile; space radiation environment |
Departments, institutes and facilities: | Fachbereich Angewandte Naturwissenschaften |
Institut für funktionale Gen-Analytik (IFGA) | |
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC): | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 57 Biowissenschaften; Biologie / 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie |
Entry in this database: | 2022/01/26 |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |