Bacteria extracted from 5,000-year-old ice in the Scărișoara Ice Cave in Romania could help us fight superbugs, new research shows – if it doesn't become one itself.
The research was led by a team from the Institute of Biology Bucharest (IBB) of the Romanian Academy, and points towards the untapped therapeutic potential – and risk – of microbes preserved in cold environments for millennia.
As bacteria continuously evolve to outsmart the best treatments we can fire at them, antibiotic resistance represents a serious challenge to public health. It's not a new phenomenon, though: This cat-and-mouse survival game has played out over millions of years.
Extreme environments, such as the ice cave this bacteria was found in, help to push diversity in their microorganisms, and it's possible that this genetic adaptation may give us a route to improved antibiotics – or make the situation worse.
"The Psychrobacter SC65A.3 bacterial strain isolated from Scărișoara Ice Cave, despite its ancient origin, shows resistance to multiple modern antibiotics and carries over 100 resistance-related genes," says IBB microbiologist Cristina Purcarea.
"But it can also inhibit the growth of several major antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs' and showed important enzymatic activities with important biotechnological potential."
The researchers removed a 25-meter (82-foot) ice core from a section of the Scărișoara Ice Cave known as the Great Hall. After carefully isolating bacterial strains in the ice, genome sequencing was used to identify which genes were linked to survival in the cold and antimicrobial activity.
That analysis revealed that Psychrobacter SC65A.3 could be a blessing and a curse: sure, it could provide leads for new antibiotic drugs, but if it's allowed to reemerge and spread, it could also share its drug-resistant genes with other bacteria.
The researchers found Psychrobacter SC65A.3 was resistant to common antibiotics used to treat lung, skin, blood, and other common infections.
This bacterial strain is part of the Psychrobacter genus of bacteria, which have specifically developed to survive in the cold. While we know some species can cause infections, there are still a lot of open questions about how these microbes evolved, and how they could be used to improve modern antibiotics.
While the process of developing any new antibiotics from this bacteria won't be quick, along the way there will be other opportunities to learn about how resistance to drugs can develop and pass between species.
The team behind this study is calling for more research to be carried out into microorganisms that have been frozen in time – giving us a window into the ancient past, and hopefully also a way to improve the future.
"To advance a comprehensive understanding of microbial life in cold environments, integrated research should focus on mapping their taxonomic and functional diversity, uncovering the mechanisms of cold adaptation, evaluating their roles in biogeochemical cycles and climate feedback processes, and exploring novel microbial taxa and functions with potential applications in biotechnology and medicine," write the researchers in their published paper.
The researchers talk about the possibility of frozen environments acting as reservoirs of resistance genes. As climate change turns frozen environments into unfrozen ones, we're already seeing thousands of tonnes of dormant microbes making a return to a world very different from the one they're familiar with.
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That means the race is on to find ways to use these bacteria to fight infections and disease before they can cause any harm.
It's thought that antibiotic resistance contributes to more than a million deaths worldwide every year, and although the trend is heading in the wrong direction, there are still signs of encouraging progress too.
"If melting ice releases these microbes, these genes could spread to modern bacteria, adding to the global challenge of antibiotic resistance," says Purcarea.
"On the other hand, they produce unique enzymes and antimicrobial compounds that could inspire new antibiotics, industrial enzymes, and other biotechnological innovations."
The research has been published in Frontiers in Microbiology.