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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Nearly three-quarters of all clinically relevant antibiotics are natural substances, produced by bacteria. However, the antibiotics that are currently available are losing their effectiveness and increasing numbers of pathogens are becoming resistant. This means there is an urgent need for new antibiotics, but at present fewer than one per cent of known species of bacteria are available for the search for active substances. The remaining 99 per cent are considered ,impossible to cultivate' and are therefore hardly studied.

In addition, the ability to produce antibiotics is not evenly distributed among bacteria. "Talented producers are primarily microorganisms with complex lifestyles, an unusual cell biology and large genomes," explains microbiologist Christian Jogler of Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. "Such organisms produce antibiotic compounds and deploy them in the fight against other bacteria for nutrients and habitats," he adds. Anywhere that such microbiological battles over resources take place and nutrients are scarce is a promising place to search for potential producers of antibiotics.

That is exactly what Jogler and his team have done. With the help of diving robots and scientific divers, they looked for Planctomycetes in a total of 10 marine locations. "We know that Planctomycetes live in communities with other microorganisms and compete with them for habitat and nutrients," says Jogler, explaining what makes this group of bacteria of interest to the researchers.

With samples from the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, as well as the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Arctic Ocean, the scientists succeeded in creating pure cultures of 79 new Planctomycetes. "These pure cultures together represent 31 new genera and 65 new species," adds lead author Dr Sandra Wiegand.

Journal Reference:

Sandra Wiegand, Mareike Jogler, Christian Boedeker, Daniela Pinto, John Vollmers, Elena Rivas-Marín, Timo Kohn, Stijn H. Peeters, Anja Heuer, Patrick Rast, Sonja Oberbeckmann, Boyke Bunk, Olga Jeske, Anke Meyerdierks, Julia E. Storesund, Nicolai Kallscheuer, Sebastian Lücker, Olga M. Lage, Thomas Pohl, Broder J. Merkel, Peter Hornburger, Ralph-Walter Müller, Franz Brümmer, Matthias Labrenz, Alfred M. Spormann, Huub J. M. Op den Camp, Jörg Overmann, Rudolf Amann, Mike S. M. Jetten, Thorsten Mascher, Marnix H. Medema, Damien P. Devos, Anne-Kristin Kaster, Lise Øvreås, Manfred Rohde, Michael Y. Galperin, Christian Jogler. Cultivation and functional characterization of 79 planctomycetes uncovers their unique biology. Nature Microbiology, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-019-0588-1

Original Submission