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On the growth dynamics of the cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC 7938 in Martian regolith. NPJ Microgravity 2022; 8:43. [PMID: 36289210 PMCID: PMC9606272 DOI: 10.1038/s41526-022-00240-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/11/2022] [Accepted: 10/12/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
The sustainability of crewed infrastructures on Mars will depend on their abilities to produce consumables on site. These abilities may be supported by diazotrophic, rock-leaching cyanobacteria: from resources naturally available on Mars, they could feed downstream biological processes and lead to the production of oxygen, food, fuels, structural materials, pharmaceuticals and more. The relevance of such a system will be dictated largely by the efficiency of regolith utilization by cyanobacteria. We therefore describe the growth dynamics of Anabaena sp. PCC 7938 as a function of MGS-1 concentration (a simulant of a widespread type of Martian regolith), of perchlorate concentration, and of their combination. To help devise improvement strategies and predict dynamics in regolith of differing composition, we identify the limiting element in MGS-1 - phosphorus - and its concentration-dependent effect on growth. Finally, we show that, while maintaining cyanobacteria and regolith in a single compartment can make the design of cultivation processes challenging, preventing direct physical contact between cells and grains may reduce growth. Overall, we hope for the knowledge gained here to support both the design of cultivation hardware and the modeling of cyanobacterium growth within.
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Mukherjee M, Geeta A, Ghosh S, Prusty A, Dutta S, Sarangi AN, Behera S, Adhikary SP, Tripathy S. Genome Analysis Coupled With Transcriptomics Reveals the Reduced Fitness of a Hot Spring Cyanobacterium Mastigocladus laminosus UU774 Under Exogenous Nitrogen Supplement. Front Microbiol 2022; 13:909289. [PMID: 35847102 PMCID: PMC9284123 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.909289] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2022] [Accepted: 05/20/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study focuses on the stress response of a filamentous, AT-rich, heterocystous cyanobacterium Mastigocladus laminosus UU774, isolated from a hot spring, Taptapani, located in the eastern part of India. The genome of UU774 contains an indispensable fragment, scaffold_38, of unknown origin that is implicated during severe nitrogen and nutrition stress. Prolonged exposure to nitrogen compounds during starvation has profound adverse effects on UU774, leading to loss of mobility, loss of ability to fight pathogens, reduced cell division, decreased nitrogen-fixing ability, reduced ability to form biofilms, reduced photosynthetic and light-sensing ability, and reduced production of secreted effectors and chromosomal toxin genes, among others. Among genes showing extreme downregulation when grown in a medium supplemented with nitrogen with the fold change > 5 are transcriptional regulator gene WalR, carbonic anhydrases, RNA Polymerase Sigma F factor, fimbrial protein, and twitching mobility protein. The reduced expression of key enzymes involved in the uptake of phosphate and enzymes protecting oxygen-sensitive nitrogenases is significant during the presence of nitrogen. UU774 is presumed to withstand heat by overexpressing peptidases that may be degrading abnormally folded proteins produced during heat. The absence of a key gene responsible for heterocyst pattern formation, patS, and an aberrant hetN without a functional motif probably lead to the formation of a chaotic heterocyst pattern in UU774. We suggest that UU774 has diverged from Fischerella sp. PCC 9339, another hot spring species isolated in the United States.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mayuri Mukherjee
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
- Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India
| | - Aribam Geeta
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
- Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India
| | - Samrat Ghosh
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
- Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India
| | - Asharani Prusty
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
- Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India
| | - Subhajeet Dutta
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
- Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India
| | - Aditya Narayan Sarangi
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
| | - Smrutisanjita Behera
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
| | | | - Sucheta Tripathy
- Computational Genomics Lab, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India
- Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India
- *Correspondence: Sucheta Tripathy ;
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Verseux C, Heinicke C, Ramalho TP, Determann J, Duckhorn M, Smagin M, Avila M. A Low-Pressure, N 2/CO 2 Atmosphere Is Suitable for Cyanobacterium-Based Life-Support Systems on Mars. Front Microbiol 2021; 12:611798. [PMID: 33664714 PMCID: PMC7920872 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.611798] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2020] [Accepted: 01/07/2021] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The leading space agencies aim for crewed missions to Mars in the coming decades. Among the associated challenges is the need to provide astronauts with life-support consumables and, for a Mars exploration program to be sustainable, most of those consumables should be generated on site. Research is being done to achieve this using cyanobacteria: fed from Mars's regolith and atmosphere, they would serve as a basis for biological life-support systems that rely on local materials. Efficiency will largely depend on cyanobacteria's behavior under artificial atmospheres: a compromise is needed between conditions that would be desirable from a purely engineering and logistical standpoint (by being close to conditions found on the Martian surface) and conditions that optimize cyanobacterial productivity. To help identify this compromise, we developed a low-pressure photobioreactor, dubbed Atmos, that can provide tightly regulated atmospheric conditions to nine cultivation chambers. We used it to study the effects of a 96% N2, 4% CO2 gas mixture at a total pressure of 100 hPa on Anabaena sp. PCC 7938. We showed that those atmospheric conditions (referred to as MDA-1) can support the vigorous autotrophic, diazotrophic growth of cyanobacteria. We found that MDA-1 did not prevent Anabaena sp. from using an analog of Martian regolith (MGS-1) as a nutrient source. Finally, we demonstrated that cyanobacterial biomass grown under MDA-1 could be used for feeding secondary consumers (here, the heterotrophic bacterium E. coli W). Taken as a whole, our results suggest that a mixture of gases extracted from the Martian atmosphere, brought to approximately one tenth of Earth's pressure at sea level, would be suitable for photobioreactor modules of cyanobacterium-based life-support systems. This finding could greatly enhance the viability of such systems on Mars.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cyprien Verseux
- Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
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Kipp MA, Stüeken EE, Gehringer MM, Sterelny K, Scott JK, Forster PI, Strömberg CAE, Buick R. Exploring cycad foliage as an archive of the isotopic composition of atmospheric nitrogen. GEOBIOLOGY 2020; 18:152-166. [PMID: 31769156 DOI: 10.1111/gbi.12374] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/20/2019] [Revised: 10/16/2019] [Accepted: 11/05/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Molecular nitrogen (N2 ) constitutes the majority of Earth's modern atmosphere, contributing ~0.79 bar of partial pressure (pN2 ). However, fluctuations in pN2 may have occurred on 107 -109 year timescales in Earth's past, perhaps altering the isotopic composition of atmospheric nitrogen. Here, we explore an archive that may record the isotopic composition of atmospheric N2 in deep time: the foliage of cycads. Cycads are ancient gymnosperms that host symbiotic N2 -fixing cyanobacteria in modified root structures known as coralloid roots. All extant species of cycads are known to host symbionts, suggesting that this N2 -fixing capacity is perhaps ancestral, reaching back to the early history of cycads in the late Paleozoic. Therefore, if the process of microbial N2 fixation records the δ15 N value of atmospheric N2 in cycad foliage, the fossil record of cycads may provide an archive of atmospheric δ15 N values. To explore this potential proxy, we conducted a survey of wild cycads growing in a range of modern environments to determine whether cycad foliage reliably records the isotopic composition of atmospheric N2 . We find that neither biological nor environmental factors significantly influence the δ15 N values of cycad foliage, suggesting that they provide a reasonably robust record of the δ15 N of atmospheric N2 . Application of this proxy to the record of carbonaceous cycad fossils may not only help to constrain changes in atmospheric nitrogen isotope ratios since the late Paleozoic, but also could shed light on the antiquity of the N2 -fixing symbiosis between cycads and cyanobacteria.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael A Kipp
- Department of Earth & Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Virtual Planetary Laboratory - NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Eva E Stüeken
- Virtual Planetary Laboratory - NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, Seattle, WA, USA
- School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK
| | - Michelle M Gehringer
- Department of Microbiology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany
| | - Kim Sterelny
- School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
- School of History, Philosophy, Political Science & International Relations, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
| | - John K Scott
- CSIRO Land and Water, Wembley, WA, Australia
- School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
| | - Paul I Forster
- Department of Environment & Science, Queensland Herbarium, Toowong, Qld, Australia
| | - Caroline A E Strömberg
- Department of Biology and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Roger Buick
- Department of Earth & Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Virtual Planetary Laboratory - NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, Seattle, WA, USA
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