Antarctic bacteria have been discovered with genes that develop natural resistance to antibiotics and antimicrobials and have the ability to spread beyond the Arctic, according to Chilean scientists.
“These” paradigms “that make it possible to withstand extreme conditions are present in moving pieces of DNA and can be easily transmitted to other bacteria,” said Andres Marcolta, a researcher at the University of Chile who led the study in the journal Macroecology. March, he said.
“We know that the soils of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the polar regions most affected by melting ice, have a wide range of bacteria, some of which are potential sources of ancestral genes,” Marcolta explained. “They develop antibiotic resistance.”
Scientists at the University of Chile collected several samples from the Antarctic Peninsula from 2017 to 2019.
“The question is whether climate change can affect the incidence of infectious diseases,” Marcolta said.
He added: “In a possible scenario, these genes could be released from this reservoir (where they live) and be a stimulus for the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.”
The researchers found that the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, one of the most common bacterial groups on the Antarctic Peninsula, was not pathogenic, but could be a source of “resistance genes” that could not be stopped by common disinfectants such as chlorine or Quaternary. Ammonium
However, another type of bacterium they studied, the polar unicellular microbacterium, “had the ability to inactivate beta-lactamase antibiotics, which are essential for treating various infections,” Marcolta said.
Source: Lebanon Debate
