While antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise, you might have thought that potentially deadly bacteria are found primarily where people and other animals congregate: on the surface of the earth. , researchers in Canada and France have found them in the most remarkable places.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungi claim at least 1.27 million lives worldwide each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fighting these superbugs is becoming increasingly difficult, but researchers are working on some new methods, including using gold, self-assembling ‘nanonets’ and shape-changing antibiotics. is.
Because antibiotic-resistant microbes pose a significant public health threat, it is important to learn more about them and how they move around the globe. That’s what researchers at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, and the University of Clermont-Auvergne in France attempted when they investigated clouds floating around a dormant volcano in the Massif He Central region of France. Working at a weather station at an altitude of 1,465 meters (about 4,806 feet) on top of the Puy de Dome, in two years he conducted 12 cloud sampling sessions.
Not only did they find that the clouds contained about 8,000 bacteria per milliliter of water, they also found that the same volume averaged 20,800 copies of the antibiotic resistance gene. They also noted that clouds arriving from transoceanic routes contained a different class of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than those that only passed over land. On land, the proportion of bacteria resistant to antibiotics used in livestock was high.
While the atmosphere has long been understood as a transit point for bacteria, it was surprising to researchers to find the same level of genes in clouds as on the surface of planets.
“This is the first study to show that clouds harbor antibiotic resistance genes of bacterial origin at levels comparable to other natural environments,” said Florent Rossi of the University of Laval, the study’s first author. said. “These bacteria typically live on the surface of vegetation and soil. They are aerosolized by wind and human activity, and some rise into the atmosphere and participate in cloud formation.”
The high concentration of antibiotic resistance genes in clouds is likely due primarily to the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry, according to the study authors. Tracing the source of the gene in future research could help contain the bug better and could be a source for the team’s future research.
“Our study shows that clouds are an important pathway for antibiotic resistance genes that spread over short and long distances,” said Rossi. “Ideally, we would like to identify the sources of emissions attributed to human activity to limit the dispersal of these genes.”
The research was published in a journal, Comprehensive Environmental Science.
Source: Laval University via EurekAlert
