CMDR Felsen83 has written a report on the current state of bacterial research.

Back on ancient earth, long before humanity took to the stars, the archaic lifeform named “Bacterium” had been known to populate almost all corners of the planet. With the new campaign to sample all life in our galaxy, initiated by Vista Genomics, we are beginning to see that this characteristic is by far not restricted to the cradle of humanity but seems to span at least all currently explored parts of the universe.

So what can be found out there by the interested commander?

As with all life known to us, bacterial have split into different species, specializing on specific means of survival. In the case of bacterial the surrounding gases seem to be the main driving factor. No bacteria have yet been found on planets with no atmosphere at all, so we have to concentrate on planets with a thin atmosphere, as our current planetary landing technology on standard issue ships doesn’t allow us to tackle thicker atmosphere descents. Following an alphabetical list of bacteria and their favored atmospheric contents:

Image	Name	Atmosphere with occurrences
	Bacterium Acies	Thin Neon Atmosphere
	Bacterium Alcyoneum	Thin Ammonia Atmosphere
	Bacterium Aurasus	Thin Carbon Dioxide Atmosphere
	Bacterium Bullaris	Thin Methane Atmosphere Thin Methane-rich Atmosphere
	Bacterium Cerbrus	Thin Sulphur Dioxide Atmosphere Thin Water Atmosphere Thin Water-rich Atmosphere
	Bacterium Informem	Thin Nitrogen Atmosphere
	Bacterium Nebulus	Thin Helium Atmosphere
	Bacterium Vesicula	Thin Argon Atmosphere
	Bacterium Volu	Thin Oxygen Atmosphere

Of course there is no general rule without exceptions. Some bacteria don’t rely on the right atmosphere alone. These species have specialized in exploiting the opportunity of free energy that is offered by most kinds of volcanism.

Four such species have currently been found (again in alphabetical order)

Picture	Name	Volcanism (according to Codex)	Atmospheres with current occurrences
	Bacterium Omentum	Nitrogen Volcanism	Thin Neon
	Bacterium Scopulum	Carbon based Volcanism (CO2 and CH4)	Thin Neon Thin Neon-rich
	Bacterium Tela	Helium Volcanism Iron Volcanism Silicate Volcanism	Thin Carbon-dioxide Thin Neon-rich Thin Sulphur-dioxide Thin Water
	Bacterium Verrata	Water Volcanism	Thin Neon Thin Neon-rich

The attentive reader will notice two things:
– the word “current” in the occurrences column
– the “according to codex” in the volcanism column

The first is due to the fact that these bacteria are usually very hard to find. So currently the database at Canonn Research Institute doesn’t have that many entries for these species. Therefore we cannot assume that this list is already complete.

For the Bacterium Tela we can see that this species can exist on various different planets. To date we cannot really see the dependence on the volcanism listed in the universal codex. This bacterium exists both on no-volcanism planets and also on planets with a variety of different volcanism according to the Universal Cartographics catalogue:

• No Volcanism (majority)
• Minor Silicate Vapour Geysers
• Major Silicate Vapour Geysers
• Minor Nitrogen Magma
• Minor Metallic Magma
• Water Magma
• Major Water Magma

For now we can only assume that all entries that are not iron or silicate related have some helium component to them. This includes any helium volcanism that doesn’t fall into the volcanism definition according to Universal Cartographics.

As for the splitting into subspecies, bacteria have evolved into different branches that either specialize in the absorption of starlight or feed on the elements provided by their host planets.

The starlight dependent species have developed the following color scheme:

Star Class	Subspecies Color
O	Turquoise
B	Grey
A	Yellow
F	Lime
G	Emerald
K	Green
M	Teal
L	Sage
T	Red
T-Tauri	Maroon
Herbig AE	Not Found Yet
Y	Mauve
Wolf-Rayet	Amethyst
White-Dwarf	Ocher
Neutron	Indigo

The bacterial species that have developed into this scheme are:

• Bacterium Aurasus
• Bacterium Alcyoneum
• Bacterium Cerbrus

Among the rest of the bacterial world we have a split into Grade 3 for the volcanism dependent and Grade 4 for the remaining atmospheric dependent and material consuming species.

Grade 3 dependent:

Material / Species	Mercury	Niobium	Tin	Tungsten	Molybdenum	Cadmium
Scopulum	Peach	Red	Mulberry	Aquamarine	Lime	White
Tela	Orange	Magenta	Cobalt	Green	Yellow	Gold
Omentum	White	Peach	Red	Blue	Aquamarine	Lime
Verrata	Red	Mulberry	Blue	Lime	White	Peach

Grade 4 dependent:

Material / Species	Technetium	Tellurium	Polonium	Ruthenium	Antimony	Yttrium
Nebulus	Cyan	Green	Gold	Orange	Magenta	Cobalt
Acies	Lime	White	Magenta	Cobalt	Cyan	Aquamarine
Vesicula	Gold	Red	Orange	Mulberry	Cyan	Lime
Informem	Aquamarine	Yellow	Lime	Gold	Red	Cobalt
Volu	Lime	Cyan	Aquamarine	Cobalt	Red	Gold
Bullaris	Gold	Lime	Yellow	Aquamarine	Cobalt	Red

Here at Canonn Research Institute we also try to predict the existence of specific bacterial species according to the known properties of planets. Unfortunately this currently seems to be a futile attempt. While we can predict the kind of bacteria that might exist on a specific planet, we are unable to tell whether a planet carries bacteria at all. The reasons for this are yet unknown. Speculations are that either bacteria haven’t spread to certain planets, or additional criteria have to be met so that they could exist on these currently barren planets.

Currently prediction attempts according to the following parameters have been made:

• Average Surface Temperature
• Gravity
• Atmospheric pressure
• Distance from the systems main star
• Body radius

Also different combinations of these parameters.

While some of these parameters show clear boundaries, like average surface temperature and gravity, the same properties can be attributed to the corresponding atmospheric compositions and planet types (metal-rich, HMC, rocky body, rocky icy planet, icy planet) at large. Still we find very similar planets within these parameters, that contain no life at all.

Hopefully we can one day find the missing parameters so that we can tap into the vast catalogue of systems and planets at Universal Cartographics to go on targeted hunts for specific species or even subspecies.

If you would like to conduct your own research into any of the Biology found in the Galaxy, you can access live data from https://canonn.fyi/biosheet