{
  "id": 3283514,
  "title": "Predicting Fungal Contaminants for Space Missions Using Proteome-Wide Screening for Protein Orthologs",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/25/predicting-fungal-contaminants-for-space-missions-using-proteome-wide",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-25T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.22.746478v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Fungal contamination is a mounting concern for spacecraft, crew wellbeing, and safeguarding other celestial bodies. A new pipeline has been devised to pinpoint fungi capable of thriving under spaceflight conditions and posing pathogenic risks. By focusing on proteins associated with stress resistance, researchers have identified orthologs across fifteen hundred fungal species. These proteins were then analyzed using comparative proteome techniques to assess their likelihood of contaminating spacecraft. The pipeline takes into account proteins with established functional connections, cross-database proteome comparisons, and identity-based scoring to generate a ranked list of fungal species to watch out for. This method was tested on samples from spacecraft assembly facilities, identifying species that exhibit both stress tolerance and potential for harm. The study paves the way for future artificial intelligence-based evaluations that can handle far more fungal species, enabling a systematic approach to identifying and evaluating fungal contaminants with the potential for adaptation and pathogenicity risks in spaceflight settings. This will bolster contamination prevention measures for upcoming space missions. Additionally, an interactive online tool is provided for researchers to quickly assess the contamination risk of species in their own samples.",
  "summary": "Fungal contamination poses a growing threat to spacecraft integrity, crew health, and planetary protection efforts. We describe a scalable and interpretable pipeline for identifying fungi with adaptation potential to spaceflight-associated stress conditions such as extreme temperatures, radiation levels, etc., and pathogenicity risks. Starting with proteins known to confer stress resistance, we…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}