German researchers have gone to the oceans to find yet unknown bacterial species in order to develop new antibiotics. The results of their experiments are promising.
As antibiotic resistance, the ability of a microorganism to resist the effects of antibiotics, is gradually becoming a major public health problem throughout the world, there is an urgent need to develop new antibiotics. Unfortunately, at present, less than one percent of known species of bacteria are available for research into active substances. The other 99% is considered impossible to cultivate and is very little studied. However, German researchers have decided to dig into the oceans to find still unknown bacterial species, potential sources of antibiotics. The promising results of their work were published on November 18 in the journal Nature.
“The talented producers (of antibiotics, editor’s note) are above all microorganisms with complex lifestyles, unusual cell biology and large genomes, explains microbiologist Christian Jogler, from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, in Germany. These organisms produce antibiotic compounds and deploy them in the fight against other bacteria for nutrients and habitats,” he adds. Thus, he and his team had the idea of looking for potential antibiotic producers in areas where nutrients are scarce and microbiological battles numerous.
They then thought of planctomycetes, which form a phylum of aquatic bacteria. “We know that planctomycetes live in communities with other microorganisms and compete with them for habitat and nutrients,” says Jogler. Aided by diving robots and scientific divers, the researcher and his team explored 10 marine sites and brought back samples from the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, as well as the Atlantic. , Pacific and Arctic.
“Opening new therapeutic avenues”
In the laboratory, they managed to create pure cultures of 79 new planctomycetes. “Together, these pure cultures represent 31 new genera and 65 new species,” explains Sandra Wiegand, lead author of the study. The results of these analyzes show that the newly obtained planctomycetes have an extraordinarily complex lifestyle and have the potential to produce new antibiotics,” she adds.
Isolated planctomycetes “divide very differently from all other important pathogenic bacteria,” says Jogler. Furthermore, their study shows unexpected new mechanisms of bacterial cell division. Finally, this work shows that it is possible to obtain and characterize supposedly “uncultivable” bacteria in pure culture.
According to the researchers, many aspects of their research could be transferred to other potential antibiotic producers. “Hypothesis-based culture and holistic characterization are key to uncovering something truly new and opening up new therapeutic avenues,” concludes Jogler enthusiastically.
“Antibiotic resistance threatens our current way of life”
These results appeared during the World Antibiotic Awareness Week organized by WHO, FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health, which took place from 18 to 22 November. The aim of this week was to raise awareness among the general public and healthcare professionals about antibiotic resistance.
The latter “is a serious global public health problem, which is progressing extremely rapidly, and which has been accelerating since the 2000s. Antibiotic resistance threatens our current way of life and compromises all the advances that medicine has made for more than 70 years. If the habits of overusing antibiotics are not stopped, antibiotic resistance could become one of the main causes of death in the world”, warns the Ministry of Health on its website.
Fortunately, in terms of antibiotic consumption, France is making slight progress, according to recent estimates from Public Health France. After analysis, “encouraging results are observed: the overall consumption of antibiotics, expressed in defined daily doses (DDD), is stabilizing. Expressed in number of prescriptions, it fell by 15% from 2009 to 2018”, notes the report.
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