What 'normality' hides

None of you may have heard of Tersicoccus phoenici s . In fact, very few can say they have seen it or had it in their hands. It is not a small mammal that lives in an isolated jungle or desert, nor is it a bacterium or algae found in very, very particular natural environments, far from any human trace.

It is a bacterium that has only been found twice on Earth . Both times, in addition, in very similar environments, in two clean rooms used by NASA ( National Aeronautics and Space Administration ) and ESA ( European Space Agency ) for the assembly of their spacecraft, which are subjected to a strict and rigid cleaning and disinfection (chemical disinfection, ultraviolet irradiation, etc.). Even more intriguing is the fact that these two venues are separated by more than 4,000km, one in Florida and one in French Guiana.

The bacterium is a member of the Micrococcaceae family , with a practically spherical shape, 1 micron in diameter (0.001mm), aerobic, Gram-positive, that does not form spores. The isolation of this bacterium in these highly controlled environments makes it even more surprising, since the bacterial spore serves to persist in very adverse environmental conditions. The ability to persist in environments with very few nutrients is accepted and for that reason it has been assigned the label of Extremophile, which it shares with other bacteria that persist and grow in almost abiotic conditions. Of this bacterium, we have only two strains or variants, since it has only been isolated in two places.

Its origin is undoubtedly terrestrial. According to some opinions, these rooms have exerted a kind of "positive selection" for this bacterium in terms of persistence and ability to stay alive with practically no nutrients. On the other hand, it would correspond to a rare bacterium that has always been kept "covered" by other bacteria that are numerically more important or metabolically more active, which have displaced it in all attempts made to isolate it under other conditions.

Of course, its genetic material has been studied and sequenced, because if at some point some form of life (bacterial or viral, of course) arrived on Earth within a spacecraft, it could be ruled out that we would not have been the ones who launched it. into space and later retrieve it.

In the same way, to prevent us from contaminating other stellar bodies or planets, this bacterium has been used as a control to improve the mechanisms and sterilization methods of these highly controlled environments.

Although the truth is that life, in all its forms, eukaryotic but above all prokaryotic, does not understand controls.