Archaeal diversity analysis of spacecraft assembly clean rooms

ABSTRACT One of the main tasks of NASA's planetary protection program is to prevent the forward contamination of extraterrestrial environments with Earth life, and in turn preserve

other planets and the integrity of future life detection missions. Despite information regarding bacterial diversity in NASA's clean rooms, little is known about the presence of

Archaea. Archaeal community analysis of spacecraft-associated surfaces is important, as they are considered by some to represent terrestrial life most capable of surviving on Mars. The first

insights into the archaeal diversity of clean rooms where spacecraft assembled are attempted. Nucleic acid sequences clustering with uncultivable Archaea within the Eury- and Crenarchaeota

were retrieved from 8 of 26 samples collected from several spacecraft assembly clean rooms. Due to their potential capability to survive and proliferate in Martian conditions, screening for

Archaea on spacecraft surfaces and instruments that are associated with future life detection missions may be necessary. SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS PHYLOGENOMICS, PHENOTYPIC, AND

FUNCTIONAL TRAITS OF FIVE NOVEL (EARTH-DERIVED) BACTERIAL SPECIES ISOLATED FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION AND THEIR PREVALENCE IN METAGENOMES Article Open access 06 November 2023 DARK

MICROBIOME AND EXTREMELY LOW ORGANICS IN ATACAMA FOSSIL DELTA UNVEIL MARS LIFE DETECTION LIMITS Article Open access 21 February 2023 ADDITION OF ANAEROBIC ELECTRON ACCEPTORS TO SOLID MEDIA

DID NOT ENHANCE GROWTH OF 125 SPACECRAFT BACTERIA UNDER SIMULATED LOW-PRESSURE MARTIAN CONDITIONS Article Open access 26 October 2020 MAIN The presence of non-extremophilic Archaea in most

biological niches (Olsen, 1994; Bintrim et al., 1997; Schouten et al., 2000) coupled with the varied metabolisms of Archaea as a whole suggests that these microbes play a significant role in

Earth's ecology (DeLong et al., 1994). Due to this ubiquity and metabolic diversity, Archaea are considered by some to be capable of surviving, or even thriving, on Mars (Krasnopolsky,

2006). The potential discovery of (ancient) liquid water on Mars (Herkenhoff et al., 2004) and the chemical compositions of the Martian atmosphere (Weiss et al., 2000) and crust (Fisk and

Giovannoni, 1999) not only raises the possibility that life may have or may still exist there, but indicates that conditions capable of supporting terrestrial life may also be present. The

prevention of contamination of Mars and other extraterrestrial environments with terrestrial biomolecules and/or life (Rummel, 1989) is therefore tremendously important to avoid confounding

future life detection missions and preserve the pristine conditions of other solar bodies. Current NASA planetary protection protocols for determining microbial burden on spacecraft surfaces

were developed using the detection of aerobic spore-forming bacteria (NASA, 2005). The recent isolation of extremotolerant bacteria (La Duc et al., 2007) and the presence of viable but yet

to be cultivated bacteria (Moissl et al., 2007) from various spacecraft assembly facility (SAF) clean rooms suggested the need to evaluate other potential microbial communities. Therefore,

samples collected from spacecraft-associated clean room facilities at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Johnson Space Center (JSC) were evaluated for archaeal signatures. In total, 26

samples were collected (18 from JPL and 8 from JSC; Table 1) and subjected to DNA extraction (Moissl et al., 2007) and Archaea-specific PCR amplification for ∼1100 bp fragments using

appropriate primer sets (methods given in Supplementary Information). Despite strict NASA clean room conditions (NASA-KSC, 1999) and demonstrated low microbial bioburden (La Duc et al.,

2007), 6 of 18 JPL-SAF and 2 of 8 JSC-Genesis Curation Laboratory (GCL) samples exhibited positive archaeal 16S rRNA gene amplification (Table 1). Air samples were collected from outside the

facility as described elsewhere (Moissl et al., 2007), however the archaeal specific fragments were not obtained. Attempts to cultivate Archaea from clean room samples or to obtain positive

archaeal signals using fluorescent _in situ_ hybridization were unsuccessful. Clones selected for sequencing, and the RFLP patterns and operational taxonomic units (OTU) obtained are given

in Table 1. Rarefaction analyses indicated the coverage value to be 100% since none of the OTU's retrieved from any of the tested samples appeared only once. The results suggested that

both facilities contained a wide diversity of Archaea (Figure 1). Among 542 clones analyzed, 31 different archaeal sequences were obtained: 26 from the JPL-SAF (479 clones) and 5 from

JSC-GCL (63 clones) locations. In general, individual archaeal sequences were unique to a given facility or location. The majority of sequences were affiliated with an uncultivable soil

Crenarchaeota group (Figure 1). Clones showed sequence differences up to 7.8% with the nearest identified archaeal species, and clustered with sequences obtained from deep South African gold

mine waters (Takai et al., 2001), soil (Bintrim et al., 1997), rhizospheres (Simon et al., 2005), permafrost soils (Ochsenreiter et al., 2003) and the leachate of landfill

(Laloui-Carpentier et al., 2006). Clones obtained were not closely related to cultivable Archaea; the 16S rRNA gene sequence of the nearest cultured neighbor, the autotrophic

ammonia-oxidizing crenarchaeon candidatus _Nitrosopumilus maritimus_ (Konneke et al., 2005), was up to 16% different. Additionally, a single clone sequence (ARC_3SAF2-2, Figure 1) from

JPL-SAF was affiliated with methanogens in the Euryarchaeal phylum. The sequence clustered with 16S rRNA gene sequences from uncultivable Archaea present in temperate anoxic soils (Wu et

al., 2006) showed at least 18% sequence difference to the closest cultivable neighbor. Although methanogens have generally been regarded as strict anaerobes, it was demonstrated that some

methanogens were able to withstand long exposure to high levels of oxygen (Kato et al., 1997) and therefore the aerobic conditions of the clean room may not necessarily be lethal. The

absence of archaeal signatures from two-thirds of the collected samples (and all of the air samples) demonstrated the relative sterility of these clean rooms. A lack of similar sequences

between the certified and uncertified rooms (JSC7 and JSC9, respectively) further illustrated the effectiveness of the quality control protocols enforced to maintain these facilities

(NASA-KSC, 1999). All retrieved sequences belonged to the Crenarchaeota and Euryarcheota phyla. This may be due in part to the primer selection as no truly universal Archaeal primer sets

have been established and it was unlikely that any Nanoarchaetoa sequences would have been amplified given the primers utilized. All of the archaeal sequences retrieved during this study

belonged to clusters of uncultivable Archaea from cold or moderate environments and their structural properties and physiological capabilities remain unknown. It was unclear whether the

detected Archaea were alive at the time of sampling, would be capable of growth in extraterrestrial environments, or able to withstand space travel, but given the ubiquitous nature of

Archaea it would be naive to completely dismiss any of these possibilities. The detection of Archaea in these controlled sanitized environments further emphasized the potential of these

microbes to exist in the most extreme biotopes. Future studies utilizing quantitative detection methods as well as the verification of archaeal viability could lead to better

characterization and enable the eradication of these microbes. To date, as per international treaty, it is required to estimate number of spores on spacecraft surfaces using conventional

culture-based method (NASA, 2005). While this may be a valid proxy for overall spacecraft cleanliness, this study has clearly demonstrated the presence of Archaea on different surfaces of

these spacecraft-associated clean rooms. As Archaea may be considered terrestrial organisms capable of living or surviving on Mars and other extraterrestrial environments, the screening for

these microbes on spacecraft surfaces and instruments associated with future life detection missions may be necessary to maintain mission integrity and prevent forward contamination.

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carried out at JPL/Caltech under a contract with NASA and funded by Mars Sample Return Mission program as well as by NRA ROSS 2005. We thank Jerome Smith and Anne Dekas (JPL), Judith Allton,

Karen McNamara, and Carlton Allen (JSC) for helping to sample various locations and Shariff Osman for critically reading this manuscript. We acknowledge John Rummel, NASA Planetary

Protection Officer for constant encouragements and Jason Kastner for facilitating various lab facilities. AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * Christine Moissl Present address: 2Current

address: Lehrstuhl fuer Mikrobiologie und Archaeenzentrum, Universitaet Regensburg, Universitaetsstrasse 31, 93053 Regensburg, Germany., AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Biotechnology and

Planetary Protection Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA Christine Moissl, James C Bruckner & Kasthuri Venkateswaran Authors *

Christine Moissl View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * James C Bruckner View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed

 Google Scholar * Kasthuri Venkateswaran View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Kasthuri Venkateswaran.

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clean rooms. _ISME J_ 2, 115–119 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2007.98 Download citation * Received: 03 September 2007 * Accepted: 04 October 2007 * Published: 08 November 2007 *

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a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Copy to clipboard Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative KEYWORDS * 16S rRNA * Archaea * clean

room * molecular community analysis * spacecraft assembly facility