Microbial-Observatory-Mini-Book-04-28-14-508

14Staphylococcus aureus are not uncommon (Pierson et al. 1996, Castro et al. 2004,Pierson 2012). Spaceflight food is another source of microorganisms aboardspacecraft. While the incidence of contamination is low, preflight analyses of foodsamples have indicated the presence of organisms such as Salmonella enterica serovarTyphimurium (S. Typhimurium), Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter cloacae andCronobacter sakazakii (unpublished data). Figure 1 details the relative abundanceof bacterial and fungal strains isolated from the air and surfaces of the ISS beforeand during flight. As these findings are based on cultured organisms, only a part ofthe picture of the microbial diversity of spacecraft has been captured. By couplingcurrent molecular methods with the ISS platform, a higher resolution of this picturehas the potential to be viewed.