This Scientist Sent A Superbug To Space To Help Life On Earth

At 9:39 a.m. on the morning of February 19th, 2017, NASA Kennedy Space Center’s historic Launch Complex 39A rumbles to life, waking from a six-year slumber. On the platform where men were once launched to the moon, sit a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule loaded with cargo, ready to be catapulted through Earth’s atmosphere to the International Space Station on a resupply mission. Among the payload, tucked inside a protective box under subzero temperatures, something else sleeps: a deadly, antibiotic-resistant superbug. This sounds like the premise for a sci-fi television drama, but truth is often stranger than fiction – and in this case, just as exciting. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA, behaves as its name suggests. It is a superbug that is resistant to antibiotic treatment. And while most MRSA infections aren’t serious, when it enters a hospital setting MRSA can become deadly. MRSA’s ability to mutate rapidly and unpredictably means it outpaces scientists’ ability to develop drugs that kill it. In turn, MRSA kills more Americans each year than AIDS – many of them children. That’s where the International Space Station enters the picture. Specifically, its microgravity. Dr. Anita Goel is a physicist and physician leading the investigation of MRSA in space, in cooperation with NASA. Her hypothesis: a microgravity environment will speed up the superbug’s mutation patterns. Why, exactly, would anyone want a deadly bu...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news