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Published online 24 September 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070924-2
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Spaceflight boosts bacterial deadliness
Microgravity increases virulence of Salmonella in space.
It sounds like a plot device from a cheap science-fiction novel: bacteria that travel into space come back to Earth deadlier than before.
But that's what an international team of researchers found when they looked at the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium grown aboard last year's Atlantis mission: it came back more virulent than controls kept on Earth.
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