Dutch researchers have managed to bring bacteria from a 28,500-year-old, frozen mammoth droppings back to life. We talked about it with professor of molecular biotechnology Gilles van Wezel.
What have you researched?
“We looked at the DNA of microbes that were frozen in the permafrost in Siberia nearly 30,000 years ago. In this case, they were in a piece of feces from the gut of a female mammoth. The bacteria (see the image above) turned out to be still alive, and their genes are partly different from those of their closest descendants today.”
How did you work?
“We put a sample of the poop on a culture medium, and the bacteria grew on it. The microbes then come out of a kind of mega-long hibernation. We read and analyzed the DNA of those bacteria.”
Read also:
Why is this research so important?
“The microbes could help us develop new antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a huge problem and to find new antibiotics we need bacteria that we have not looked at and screened before. We have found that the substances — including antibiotics — that the permafrost bacteria produce appear to be different from the substances of the microbes we know today. This indicates that bacteria from permafrost could be a good source for new medicines.”
What are the next steps?
“We want to further analyze the bacteria that we have now studied. But the big question we want to investigate in particular is what the potential of permafrost in general is as a source of beneficial microbes.”
This short interview can also be found in KIJK 3/2023, the edition that will be in stores from 16 February.
Image (header): Doris van Bergeijk
