Andres
Marcoleta, a researcher from the University of Chile who headed the study
published in the Science of the Total Environment journal in March, said that
these "superpowers" which evolved to resist extreme conditions are
contained in mobile DNA fragments that can easily be transferred to other
bacteria. "We
know that the soils of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the polar areas most
impacted by melting ice, host a great diversity of bacteria," Marcoleta
said. "And that some of them constitute a potential source of ancestral
genes that confer resistance to antibiotics." Scientists
from the University of Chile collected several samples from the Antarctic
Peninsula from 2017 to 2019. "It is
worth asking whether climate change could have an impact on the occurrence of
infectious diseases," Marcoleta said. "In a
possible scenario, these genes could leave this reservoir and promote the
emergence and proliferation of infectious diseases." Researchers
found that the Pseudomonas bacteria, one of the predominant bacteria groups in
the Antarctic Peninsula, are not pathogenic but can be a source of 'resistance
genes', which are not stopped by common disinfectants such as copper, chlorine
or quaternary ammonium. However, the
other kind of bacteria they researched, Polaromonas bacteria, does have the
"potential to inactivate beta-lactam type antibiotics, which are essential
for the treatment of different infections," said Marcoleta.