The staff of the Geological Faculty of the Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov learned that microorganisms that live in permafrost developed antibiotic resistance much earlier than humans. In the future, this will help to understand the nature of human resistance to drugs used in medicine. The results of the work were published in the journal Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease.
The authors studied living microorganisms, bacteria and viruses that infect bacteria (bacteriophages), which are located in the permafrost. Microorganisms are an integral part of frozen rocks, but their properties, role and significance, including in geological processes, are poorly studied. Scientists suggest that the age of cells of microorganisms in frozen strata, which occupy about 65% of the territory of Russia, is thousands and even millions of years. However, the mechanism that allows them to persist for so long is still unclear. Permafrost temperatures are not low enough to keep cells or bacterial spores frozen and surrounded by ice and rock particles. They must die due to multiple damage to the genome and other cellular structures, and these damage usually accumulates rather quickly.
“It turned out that the ancient microorganisms we studied are resistant to antibiotics. This means that antibiotic resistance appeared in bacteria long before large-scale human use of such drugs.
Consequently, its nature, obviously, is not associated with the modern adaptation of microbes to antibiotics, but has a much more ancient origin,”said one of the authors of the article, Anatoly Brushkov, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Head of the Department of Geocryology, Faculty of Geology, Moscow State University. Lomonosov.
In the course of the work, the scientists carried out genetic studies, sequencing and analysis of the genome of one of the isolated bacteria, as well as experimental studies using modern antibiotics.
“We hope the study will help clarify the nature of resistance to these critical medicinal drugs. Permafrost is shrinking as a result of global climate change, and the emergence of bacteria trapped in frozen rocks in the modern biosphere may bring surprises,”the scientist concluded.
The work was carried out in collaboration with scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.