Christopher Kraft, the former head of Nasa's Manned Spaceflight Centre, one of the authors of the letter, warned of a "catastrophic re-entry" of the 400-tonne station into the Earth's atmosphere and showers of debris if there was no capability to fix it in the event of a "terrible failure".
Bacteria and Archaea have evolved the capability to fix atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, a form readily usable in biological processes.
This study also suggests that in many similar cases integrated methods have capability to fix bugs more effectively and successfully in exploration programs.
Understanding the metabolic role of CAs in the chemolithoautotropic bacterium Ralstonia eutropha is important for the development of high performance fermentation processes based on the bacterium's capability to fix carbon using the Calvin-Benson-Bassham (CBB) cycle.
Algae-based fuels are in the research and development stage, but are shown to have immense potential to become commercially important because of their capability to fix large amounts of CO2, to rapidly grow in many environments and versatile end uses.
Shape memory polymers (SMPs) have gained strong research interests recently due to their mechanical action that exploits their capability to fix temporary shapes and recover their permanent shape in response to an environmental stimulus such as heat, electricity, irradiation, moisture or magnetic field, among others.
While it's tempting to speculate that viruses may directly participate in nitrogen fixation in the marine environment through acquisition of host nifU genes, it's premature to do so since microbes that do not have the capability to fix nitrogen can also carry this gene and no sequenced marine viral isolates appear to harbor nifU-like sequences [46].
It is well known that legumes require much less input of nitrogen fertilizer owing to their natural capability to fix atmospheric nitrogen.
However, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans was the only species among key rare microbes with the capability to fix nitrogen, suggesting a key role in nitrogen cycling.
As a leguminous plant, soybean has a superior potential capability to fix atmospheric N2 in association with highly specialized soil bacteria.
Consequently, the acquisition of nif genes and cooperative control of two regulatory systems of different evolutionary origins confer A1501 with the unusual capability to fix nitrogen.
