Researchers study ocean plastics as potential source of antibiotics
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Researchers in California are studying ocean plastics as a potential source of novel antibiotics.
The project is part of a collaboration between National University and the University of California, San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Ana Maria Barral, PhD, associate professor of math and natural sciences at National University, and Jeff Bowman, PhD, assistant professor of marine biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, serve as principal investigators, but Barral said the research has been driven by students, including Andrea Price and Allison Leask, both recent graduates of National University’s clinical lab science program.
The study design was adapted from the Tiny Earth project, a research program in which students crowdsource antibiotic discoveries from soil. Instead of soil, the researchers are studying the “plastisphere” — the ecosystem formed by microbes living on plastic debris.
“Inspiration came from the need to search for alternative sources of antibiotics, considering the rise of superbugs and the lack of novel antibiotics,” Barral told Healio.
According to study details presented at ASM Microbe, they used specially designed cages to sink plastic approximately 16 feet deep in ocean water near the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier in La Jolla, California — a prominent research facility — for at least a month.
After retrieving the plastic, they swabbed it and tested the resulting bacterial colonies against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, including “safe” relatives of the six ESKAPE pathogens — chosen because they are less pathogenic and safer to handle — and antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria provided by the CDC.
In all, the project resulted in five antibiotic-producing bacteria, including two gram-negative bacteria named A5 and H6 that showed the broadest range of activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial strains. A5 and a gram-positive Bacillus named HB1 were consistently effective against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.
Barral said the next step is determining whether these antibiotics are novel.
“If they are, that could lead to a possible drug discovery route,” Baral said. “For that, we will collaborate with institutions that have the capacity for such a process. It is too early to say. However, this project will go on as an education project, so students are exposed to authentic research while still undergraduates.”
References:
UC San Diego. Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier. https://scripps.ucsd.edu/about/scripps-pier. Accessed June 13, 2022.
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tiny Earth. https://tinyearth.wisc.edu/. Accessed June 13, 2022.
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Price A, et al. Abstract 3672. Presented at: ASM Microbe; June 9-13, 2022; Washington, D.C.
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