From planetary safety to cultural heritage: an interdisciplinary exploration of microorganisms on inanimate surfaces

Kurzfassung

Interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of microbiology, cultural heritage, material sciences, and biosafety broaden the frontiers of knowledge by offering enriched perspectives on microbial communities and their interactions with the objects and materials they inhabit. Along these lines, we have investigated the microbial communities present on cultural heritage objects, such as ancient medieval booksa housed at the Leipzig University Library, and those associated with the bioburden controls of spacecraft and cleanroom facilities of the European Space Agency (ESA)b mandated by planetary protection policies. Although these isolation sources might initially appear unrelated, both datasets share common taxa known for their capacity to survive under extreme conditions. These include endospore-forming genera Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Peribacillus, and Priestia, but also other genera including Micrococcus, Kocuria, and Staphylococcus. A current project moves beyond cataloguing efforts to employ targeted microbial cultivation combined with phylogenomic and functional analyses to investigate specific survival strategies of staphylococcal taxa. This work has broader implications, given the potential pathogenicity of the target genus. Samples were retrieved from 13th-century medieval manuscripts and from spaceflight hardware and assembly facilities at several ESA locations. Selected Staphylococcus epidermidis isolates were fully sequenced using a combination of long- and short-read sequencing technologies, followed by bioinformatic assembly. We obtained, twelve high-quality, closed S. epidermidis genomes from the medieval manuscripts and twenty-three from the ESA collection. Ongoing phylogenetic and functional analyses aim to elucidate evolutionary relationships and explore the mechanisms of persistence under extreme conditions. Our interdisciplinary and in-depth profiling of the ESA collection and cultural heritage isolates contributes not only to bioburden control strategies for space missions but also hold relevance for terrestrial facilities, such as hospitals and food production sites, where stringent contamination controls are critical, as well as for the preservation of cultural heritage. Flocco et al. 2023. Touching the (almost) untouchable: a minimally invasive workflow [..] DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1197837. The ESA Microbial Collection at the DSMZ. www.dsmz.de/collection/catalogue/microorganisms/special-groups-of-organisms/esa-strains