Bacteria More Virulent in Microgravity

Tortured Potato writes "Did you know that salmonella become more virulent in simulated microgravity? No one's sure why, either. Professor Cheryl Nickerson of Tulane University is hoping to find out why when an experiment with brewer's yeast gets sent up on a Russian Progress rocket to the Space Station next year."

This isnt the smartest question ever posed...

[hookedup]

Would it's ability to be more virulent possibly come from it's relative ease of travel with no gravity? Like somehow gravity 'slows' the virus down when it's on the planet or something...ok...this is where i trail off...

Go gentle on me.

Re:This isnt the smartest question ever posed...

[Oddly_Drac]

"ok...this is where i trail off..."

Relax, you still got insightful.

"it's relative ease of travel with no gravity"

Or bifurcation in three dimensions being a darn sight easier than in two dimensions and lacking any downward pressure on the cytoplasm meaning that a simple organism can redirect resources to it's primary function, reproduction...

Empiricism gets really silly when they start going for the showy experiments. For example, is this limited to Salmonella, or do all bacteria show the same increase in virulence?

Artificial Gravity

[kippy]

What I would like to know is why more research isn't being done on artificial gravity. So many of the health problems encountered in LEO gravity cound be sidestepped if you just spin the damn craft.

I would love to know why some of the effort being spent on watching things get sick in 0g isn't being directed to something as simple as spinning a glorified beer keg in orbit with some mice in it.

Can someone tell me why this isn't being done?

Re:This isnt the smartest question ever posed...

[supertsaar]

Hmmm. I think these really-really small bacteria suspended in a liqiud medium don't care too much about the gravity. You know, they are so small the impact of individual molecules makes them shake. (see Brownian movement [bartleby.com] Yet we see these effects, apparantly....(I'd really like to see these effects being reproduced by another group) I don't think its that simple somehow....

energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

prolly because they don't have to waste so much
energy crawling around and can concentrate
more on reproducing (energy wise ...).

prolly all da cell functions are also
more efficient because 70-90% of a cell
is water and in mcrogravity the molecules
are better "lubricated" / less friction ...