--- title: "Identifying Microbes in Space" url: https://daily.dev/posts/identifying-microbes-in-space-emibrk02q source_url: https://towardsdatascience.com/space-mould type: article source: "Towards Data Science" published: 2026-07-07T14:03:14.775Z updated: 2026-07-07T14:03:38.894Z tags: ["biotech"] reading_time: 11 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Identifying Microbes in Space **[Towards Data Science](https://daily.dev/sources/tds)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A walkthrough of identifying microbial species on the International Space Station's dining table using metagenomics. DNA sequencing data from a NASA study is processed with fastp for quality trimming, then classified with kraken2, a fast k-mer-based taxonomic classifier. The analysis reveals bacteria common to human skin, hospital environments, and food production — including a kimchi-associated strain (Leuconostoc mesenteroides MSL129) that appears to have survived and thrived on the ISS. The post also explains how kraken2 achieves its speed through minimizers, compact hash codes, and exact k-mer matching rather than alignment, drawing parallels to locality-sensitive hashing techniques used in web search and plagiarism detection. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [3 Questions: Using computation to study the world’s best single-celled chemists](https://daily.dev/posts/3-questions-using-computation-to-study-the-world-s-best-single-celled-chemists-3j9pgfi33) · MIT News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Microbes could extract the metal needed for cleantech](https://daily.dev/posts/microbes-could-extract-the-metal-needed-for-cleantech-ghrmuh1vt) · MIT Technology Review · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Was Methane a Signature of Life in 3I/ATLAS?](https://daily.dev/posts/was-methane-a-signature-of-life-in-3i-atlas--p6opzdkix) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Soundcell Uses Graphene Drums to Spot Superbugs](https://daily.dev/posts/soundcell-uses-graphene-drums-to-spot-superbugs-rrd9a8qzt) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#biotech](https://daily.dev/tags/biotech) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/identifying-microbes-in-space-emibrk02q)