GRIND: Genomic Rapid Inspection of Non-abundant bacteria after Decontamination

This Phase II proposal advances NASA's planetary protection mission by developing an innovative lysis-based sample collection tool that significantly enhances current swab-based procedures. While NASA's existing protocol uses swabs for microbial collection followed by the NASA standard assay, this method struggles to detect low biomass, unculturable species, and microbial dark matter. Spores are resilient to the extreme conditions of space, and though culturable, often remain undetected in metagenomic sequencing and other nucleic acid-based analyses, creating a critical gap in planetary protection protocols. Our solution builds upon our successful automated grinding lysis system developed in Phase I. This integrated platform combines traditional swab collection with novel mechanical disruption to effectively release genomic material from difficult-to-lyse, low-biomass samples. By automating and optimizing the lysis process through precision grinding mechanisms, our system overcomes the limitations of conventional techniques, ensuring more comprehensive nucleic acid extraction for planetary protection applications. The Phase II work will rigorously evaluate our technology against industry-standard bead beating methods through metagenomic sequencing. Our testing protocol encompasses diverse NASA-relevant surfaces—including steel, aluminum, and polycarbonate—and a broad spectrum of challenging-to-lyse, NASA relevant microbial species. We will demonstrate system effectiveness using Nanopore sequencing with Carrier-Seq, a method to enable low biomass sequencing. This innovative system promises to enable detecting and analyzing low biomass, resistant spores that currently evade standard detection methods. By enhancing the reliability and comprehensiveness of microbial detection, our technology will strengthen NASA's planetary protection capabilities, helping safeguard both Earth and celestial bodies from cross-contamination during space exploration.

The GRIND automated lysis system is a pivotal tool for NASA's planetary protection mission. Aligned with NASA's goals, it enhances Nanopore-based metagenomic sequencing and offers versatile applications, such as plant sampling and microbial contamination detection. As space exploration advances, the GRIND system becomes a versatile tool, addressing challenges and contributing to NASA's broader mission of understanding and adapting to extraterrestrial environments. The GRIND technology offers transformative capabilities for rapid pathogen detection in both healthcare and food safety applications. In clinical settings, it enables early detection of hard-to-lyse and low-biomass organisms from surface swabs, nosocomial infections. For food safety, GRIND's advanced lysis capabilities improve detection of resistant foodborne pathogens on processing equipment.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.