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“We found five new species that we believe are unknown to science,” said Associate Professor Clare Kirkpatrick, who studies bacterial danger response at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Southern Denmark.
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The surprising discovery was made during the coronavirus pandemic, when some of Kirkpatrick’s students couldn’t conduct their normal studies of microbes in the lab, so they went on field trips to riverbanks to see if discover new microbes.
What researchers know about the new Fyn8 virus
The fact that unknown viruses exist in nature is not at all surprising, since the virus is the most widespread organism on Earth, according to Science Daily.
Viruses are everywhere and part of all kinds of microbial cycles and ecosystems, but the fact that five potentially new species have appeared in local gorges surprised Clare Kirkpatrick.
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While four of the five new species have not yet been mapped in a genome sequence, one species has now been fully sequenced, scientifically described, named and published in Microbiology Resource Announcements.
Her name is Fyn8.
“Bacteriophage” viruses, helping people
Many viruses are “bacteriophages,” meaning they kill bacteria, and Fyn8 is no exception. It can attack and kill the “Pseudomonas aeruginosa” bacteria.
“Pseudomonas aeruginosa” is a bacterium found naturally in soil and water. It is normally harmless to healthy people, but like many other bacteria, it has developed resistance to antibiotics and is found in hospitals.
For example, patients with wounds (such as burn patients) and ventilated patients are at risk of getting an infection that cannot be fought with antibiotics.
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The researchers have no doubt that Fyn8 can kill effectively Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
“We could see with the naked eye: clear holes appeared in the layer of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria in our Petri dishes, where Fyn8 had infected the bacterial cells, killed them, multiplied and attacked the next one,” explained the Danish scientists .
Hope for stopping nosocomial infections
Given that the world is facing a resistance crisis, where more people will die from an infection with resistant bacteria than from cancer, the new finding is certainly interesting and raises the question: Can bacteriophages help us in the fight against resistant bacteria?
Research in this area has been uncommon until recently, both in academic research institutions and pharmaceutical companies.
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However, in the past and in other parts of the world, there has been some research and bacteriophages have been used to treat infections in Eastern European countries in particular, according to the cited source.
Viruses, more efficient than antibiotics!
Bacteriophages were discovered by chance in the early 20th century by researchers whose bacterial cultures were destroyed by virus infections.
The benefits of this discovery were obvious, but antibiotics, not bacteriophage viruses, became the most widespread cure for bacterial infections.
One reason was that antibiotics were easy to produce and easy to use, while viruses were more difficult to isolate and administer to patients.
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Another reason was probably the fact that one dose of antibiotic could kill many different bacteria, whereas a bacteriophage only matches one bacterial species!
“But today it’s relatively easy to do precision medicine for each patient. First you find out what exact bacteria the patient’s body is infected with – and then you can treat the patient with the exact bacteriophage virus that will kill those bacteria,” explained doctor Clare Kirkpatrick.
She added that this strategy works even on bacteria that are resistant to all known antibiotics.
