Bioprospecting to Prevent the Antibiotic Apocalypse

I didn’t know that antibiotic resistant MRSA killed more people in the US in 2013 than AIDS, hepatitis B, and tuberculosis combined, but it did. Researchers predict that it will become resistant to all major antibiotics within the next decade or two. If this happens simple infections could become fatal. Now that’s a scary thought. Now more pharmaceutical companies are going on foraging missions looking for medicinal treasures in remote places. They are bioprospecting for microorganisms and compounds to be used in developing new antibiotics. Over half of all drugs on the market are derived or inspired by plants, animals, or bacteria, soil bacteria being the source for many current antibiotics. Our planet’s hostile environments are home to more life than I ever realized, like below the ice in the Antarctic or in the hotspots created by volcanoes. The Peru-Chile trench in the Pacific Ocean is one such environment ripe for bioprospecting. The ocean trenches’ isolation makes them underwater versions of the Galapagos Islands with populations of novel bacteria that may hold the key to creating new antibiotics. There are many steps involved beginning with the actual bioprospecting and creating special high pressure chambers that can help keep the deep water microscopic critters alive on their way to a lab in our less hostile (for us anyway) environment and ending hopefully with new miracle drugs to combat present day diseases.