[T-A]

> Of all the strains of bacteria that we might give an opportunity to optimize for space survival, why would we pick something that is a threat to humans.

These bacteria were not intentionally brought to the ISS, they hitched a ride in/on the crews and colonized the station. From the paper [1]:

We obtained 211 assembled genomes, annotated as E. bugandensis, from the publicly available National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) GenBank sequence database [20]. Among these genomes, 12 were isolated from three different locations aboard the ISS during the first Flight of the MT-1 mission: four from the Air Control (AC) samples, one from the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED), and seven from the Waste and Hygiene Compartment (WHC). Additionally, one metagenome-assembled genome (MAG) was recovered from the WHC samples.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10960378/

[Nevermark]

Thanks! I didn’t pick up on the bacteria simply being discovered!

Makes much better sense.