New bacteria, and two potential antibiotics, discovered in soil
a day ago
- #soil_bacteria
- #microbiology
- #antibiotics
- Researchers developed a method to access untapped bacterial genomes in soil without lab cultivation.
- The approach involves extracting large DNA fragments from soil and sequencing them to uncover new bacterial genomes.
- From a single forest sample, hundreds of new bacterial genomes and two potential antibiotics were discovered.
- The two new antibiotics, erutacidin and trigintamicin, show effectiveness against drug-resistant bacteria.
- The method is scalable and can be applied to various metagenomic environments beyond soil.
- This breakthrough could lead to new therapeutics and insights into microbial ecosystems.