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Jenna M. Lang edited Introduction.md
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#Introduction
There is a growing appreciation of the importance of communities of microbes found in diverse environments from the oceans, to soil, to the insides and outsides of various plants and animals. Recently there has been an expanding focus on the microbial ecology of the "built environment" - those human constructed entities like buildings, cars, ships and planes - places where we spend a large fraction of our time. One somewhat unexplored - yet certainly important - type of built environment is that found in space. As humans expand their reach into the solar system - with more and more plans for space travel, and possible colonization of other planets and moons, we believe it is of critical importance to understand the microbial ecology of the built environments being utilized for such endeavors.
We note - we are not saying that nobody has expressed interest Interest in
this topic before. There have been a reasonable number of studies of the microbial
ecology and diversity of built environments in space. We have compiled a collection of such papers in an online resource to provide a historical perspective to this kind of work (see http://www.mendeley.com/groups/844031/microbiology-of-the-built-environment/papers/added/0/tag/space/) . Though these studies have been occupants of
great value, none we could find make use spacecraft long precedes the launch of the
approach International Space Station \cite{11883448}\cite{5173646}. Early work primarily focused on ensuring that
is dominated studies spacecraft were free of
other communities over the last few years. This approach is to use so called "next generation" DNA sequencing microbial contaminants in an effort to
characterize avoid inadvertent panspermia (seeding other planets with microbes from Earth.) With the
communities launch of
microbes found in particular environments. Since next generation sequencing has become very inexpensive and easy to conduct, the ISS, it
has become a regular tool in characterzie was clear that this new built environment would be housing microbes as well as humans. Calls were made for a
large number better understanding of microbial
samples. We report here on an effort to use such next generation sequencing methods to begin ecology and human-microbe interactions during extended stays in space \cite{pierson2007microbial} \cite{14994179}. Efforts were made to
study the establish a baseline microbial
communities found on census. Novikova et al \cite{16364606} obtained more than 500 samples from the
International Space Station. air, potable water, and surfaces of the ISS, over the course of 6 years.
More examples of monitoring microbes: \cite{14569419} \cite{14569419}
These studies were limited by their reliance on culturing to identify microbial species.
The first use of 16S on the ISS:\cite{14749908}
Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development Portable Test System (LOCAD-PTS) was launched in 2006, and allows astronauts to test surfaces for endotoxin (a marker for gram negative bacteria)
There have been a reasonable number of studies of the microbial ecology and diversity of built environments in space. We have compiled a collection of such papers in an online resource to provide a historical perspective to this kind of work (see http://www.mendeley.com/groups/844031/microbiology-of-the-built-environment/papers/added/0/tag/space/). Though these studies have been of great value, none we could find make use of the approach that is dominated studies of other communities over the last few years. This approach is to use so called "next generation" DNA sequencing to characterize the communities of microbes found in particular environments. Since next generation sequencing has become very inexpensive and easy to conduct, it has become a regular tool in characterzie a large number of microbial samples. We report here on an effort to use such next generation sequencing methods to begin to study the microbial communities found on the International Space Station.
This project was done not just for the science but also for its outreach and education potential.
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