‘Shape-shifting’ Bacteria in Space Bad News for Astronauts

‘Shape-shifting’ Bacteria in Space Bad News for Astronauts
The International Space Station photographed from the space shuttle Atlantis as the orbiting complex and the shuttle performed their relative separation in the early hours of July 19, 2011. NASA via Wikimedia Commons
|Updated:

Researchers have recently discovered that bacteria aboard the International Space Station (ISS) show a “shape-shifting” behavior.

In a recent study, published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, researchers took cultured E. coli bacteria and exposed them to different concentrations of a common antibiotic, gentamicin sulfate, that is deadly to E. coli on Earth.