好消息！太空细菌可能无法进化到毁灭我们的地步 [美国媒体]

Good news: space bacteria (probably) aren’t evolving to destroy us

好消息！太空细菌可能无法进化到毁灭我们的地步



Microbes on ISS are changing their genes, but don’t worry.

在国际空间站上，微生物们的基因正在改变，但是不用担心。

We’ve all read science fiction stories about a disease going rogue on a space ship, decimating the crew. While space holds plenty of other terrors, new research suggests that bacteria we bring with us from Earth are more likely to evolve to survive alongside the spaceship’s human crew.

某种疾病在太空飞船上爆发肆虐，杀死飞船上所有人员，我们都读过类似情节的科幻小说。尽管太空中有着其它许多恐怖的东西，但新的研究表明，我们从地球带来的细菌更有可能进化成与太空飞船上的人类宇航员共同生存的细菌。

Bacteria are inescapable, wherever life exists. That includes all built environments, from houses to the International Space Station. However, scientists have only started to study how microbes adapt to these living conditions.

细菌是不可避免的，有生命存在的地方就有细菌，包括了从房屋到国际空间站的所有人造环境。但目前科学家们只开始研究微生物如何适应这些生活条件。

“There are a lot of questions about how space flight and space conditions will affect organisms including microbes,” says Erica Hartmann, Northwestern University microbiologist and environmental engineer and author of a new paper that holds answers for at least some of those questions.

美国西北大学微生物学家、环境工程师Erica Hartmann表示：“关于太空飞行和太空条件将如何影响包括微生物在内的有机体，这其中有很多可以研究的问题。”Erica最近新发表的一篇论文至少能解答其中的一些问题。

Humans living in space have weakened immune systems, which potentially makes spacefaring people more vulnerable to infection. How bacteria respond is less well-documented, and there have been some concerns that they’ll adapt to space conditions in ways that will make them harmful to humans.

在太空中生活，人类的免疫系统会变弱，这可能使得太空人更容易受到感染。而细菌对太空环境的反应如何，相关的记录还没有很完善。有人担心这些细菌会适应太空环境，从而对人类产生危害。

The new study, published this week in the journal mSystems, offers a promising hint that in space, bacteria are just adapting to survive.

本周，发表在《mSystems》杂志上的一项新研究给出了一个美好的提示：在太空中，细菌只能适应生存。

Hartmann and her colleagues compared the genomes of microbes from the International Space Station and ones here on Earth. Unlike humans, who generally carry the same genes, bacteria can differ—even within the same species.

Hartmann和她的同事们比较了国际空间站上和地球上微生物的基因组。与通常携带相同基因的人类不同，细菌的基因甚至在同一物种内也可以有不同。

Of course, not all humans are identical, but we all carry the same kinds of genetic information: we may have brown or blue eyes, but almost all of us are born with the genes that create peepers of some sort. For bacteria, “it would sort of be the equivalent of some of the bacteria in a species having wings and some having arms,” says Hartmann.

当然了，并非所有的人类基因都是相同的，但我们都携带着同一种遗传信息：我们可能有棕色或者蓝色的眼睛，但几乎所有人都天生自带创造某种眼睛的基因。而对于细菌来说，“这就有点像同一种细菌中有的长了翅膀，有的却长了手臂，”哈特曼说道。

They looked at two common bacteria: Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus. “We picked these two because they have very different lifestyles,” says Hartmann. S. aureus is a typical resident of the human microbiome, but can blossom into an infection in the right conditions. B. cereus lives in soil.

他们观察了两种常见的细菌：金黄色葡萄球菌和蜡样芽孢杆菌。Hartmann称：“我们之所以选择这两种细菌，是因为它们的生存方式极其不同。”金黄色葡萄球菌是一种典型的人类微生物，但是在适当条件下，它可以发展成一种致病菌。而蜡样芽孢杆菌则生活在土壤中。

Hartmann and her colleagues found that the bacteria on the ISS were genetically different from their counterparts on Earth—but not in ways that made them more virulent or resistant to measures like antibiotics.

Hartmann和她的同事们发现，国际空间站上的细菌与地球上的同类细菌在基因上是不同的，但是这并不会在某种程度上让它们更具杀伤力或者对抗生素等措施更有抵抗力。

“Our findings suggest that the most crucial bacterial functions involved in this potential adaptive response are specific to bacterial lifestyle and do not appear to have direct impacts on human health,” the researchers write.

研究人员写道：“我们的研究结果表明，在这种潜在的适应性反应中，细菌最关键的功能只特定于（改变）细菌的生活方式，应该不会对人类健康产生直接影响。”

It’s a promising set of first results, but we can’t assume the estimated one trillion species of microbes on Earth will all behave the same way in space. “Bacterial diversity is huge,” Hartmann says. She hopes further research can expand the comparison by analyzing other bacteria, and doing experiments to try to replicate the changes in lab environments.

这是一组很美好的初步结果，但我们不能因此就认为地球上大约一万亿种微生物在太空中都会有这样的行为。Hartmann表示“细菌的种类极其多样。”她希望进一步研究，通过分析其它细菌来扩大这一对比度，并通过做实验来尝试复制实验室环境中（细菌发生）的变化。

Hartmann’s team “did a really good job,” says David Coil, a UC Davis microbiologist who studies the ISS.

加州大学戴维斯分校研究国际空间站的微生物学家David Coil称，Hartmann团队“做得非常好”。

“There’s a lot of fear-mongering about microbes in general and particularly microbes on the space station,” he says. The approach Hartmann’s team used, looking at the changes in space microbes at a genetic level, offers an evidence-based and reasonable assessment of the ways the bacteria they studied adapt to space conditions, he says.

他表示：“人们普遍都很恐惧微生物，特别是空间站上的微生物。”Hartmann研究小组使用的方法，从基因角度上观察了太空中微生物的变化，为他们关于细菌如何适应太空条件的研究提供了一个基于证据的合理评估。

Their results are “sort of reassuring,” he adds, because they indicate that bacteria don’t seem to adapt to space-faring conditions by becoming more virulent.

他还说道，Hartmann小组的研究结果“在某种程度上令人放心”，因为他们表明细菌似乎无法通过变得更具杀伤力来适应太空环境。

Research of this kind could have vast applications, from spacecraft design to home design. If researchers can figure out what kinds of surfaces promote bad adaptations in extraterrestrial bacteria, for instance, spacecraft designers can concentrate on minimizing those structures or using alternatives.

从航天用途到家庭用途，这类研究具有广阔的应用前景。举个例子，如果研究人员能弄清楚什么样的表层会促使细菌在太空中产生对人类有害的适应，那么航天器设计者就可以专注于最小化这些结构，或者使用替代品。

All built environments have microbes, says Hartmann, because they contain life—it’s just a matter of figuring out how to best live with them, rather than trying to wipe them all out.

Hartmann说道，所有的人造环境都存在微生物，因为这种环境中存在生命。我们需要解决的问题是如何最有利于我们地和它们生活在一起，而不是试图将它们全部消灭。