SpaceX Is About to Send a Lethal Superbug Into Orbit
SpaceX Is About to Send a Lethal Superbug Into Orbit
To mutate the hell out of it.
SpaceX is preparing to launch a lethal, antibiotic-resistant superbug into orbit on February 14, to live its days in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS).
The idea is not to weaponise space with MRSA - a bacterium that kills more Americans every year than HIV/AIDS, Parkinson's disease, emphysema, and homicide combined - but to send its mutation rates into hyperdrive, allowing scientists to see the pathogen's next moves well before they appear on Earth.
The NASA-funded study will see SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launch colonies of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) into space, to be cultivated in the US National Laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS).
"We will leverage the microgravity environment on the ISS to accelerate the Precision Medicine revolution here on Earth," lead researcher Anita Goel, CEO of biotech company Nanobiosym, told Yahoo News.
Back in 2015, Nanobiosym developed a device known as Gene-RADAR - the world's first mobile scanner that enables real-time diagnosis of any disease, at a tenth of the cost of similar diagnostic tests.
The device will be used on the International Space Station to evaluate how bacterial mutations of two strains of MRSA respond to the microgravity environment.
From that, Goel and her team will develop models that predict how the antibiotic-resistant pathogen will mutate on Earth in the coming years, giving drug developers a chance to pre-empt its next defensive moves.
"Our ability to anticipate drug-resistant mutations with Gene-RADAR will lead to next generation antibiotics that are more precisely tailored to stop the spread of the world's most dangerous pathogens," says Goel.
SpaceX Is About to Send a Lethal Superbug Into Orbit
To mutate the hell out of it.
SpaceX is preparing to launch a lethal, antibiotic-resistant superbug into orbit on February 14, to live its days in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS).
The idea is not to weaponise space with MRSA - a bacterium that kills more Americans every year than HIV/AIDS, Parkinson's disease, emphysema, and homicide combined - but to send its mutation rates into hyperdrive, allowing scientists to see the pathogen's next moves well before they appear on Earth.
The NASA-funded study will see SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launch colonies of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) into space, to be cultivated in the US National Laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS).
"We will leverage the microgravity environment on the ISS to accelerate the Precision Medicine revolution here on Earth," lead researcher Anita Goel, CEO of biotech company Nanobiosym, told Yahoo News.
Back in 2015, Nanobiosym developed a device known as Gene-RADAR - the world's first mobile scanner that enables real-time diagnosis of any disease, at a tenth of the cost of similar diagnostic tests.
The device will be used on the International Space Station to evaluate how bacterial mutations of two strains of MRSA respond to the microgravity environment.
From that, Goel and her team will develop models that predict how the antibiotic-resistant pathogen will mutate on Earth in the coming years, giving drug developers a chance to pre-empt its next defensive moves.
"Our ability to anticipate drug-resistant mutations with Gene-RADAR will lead to next generation antibiotics that are more precisely tailored to stop the spread of the world's most dangerous pathogens," says Goel.
