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Different species of bacteria are at risk of extinction – and the best way to preserve them is to deposit samples of feces and other biological materials from all over the world in a vault located in Switzerland.
This is the proposal of a group of scientists, who have already started working on this collection of microorganisms. The researchers argue that this effort is essential to better understand the role that many of these living beings play in our health.
In the future, the initiative, which brings together universities from various parts of the world, may also result in new treatments against various chronic diseases noncommunicable diseases such as obesity and asthma.
Known as Microbiota Vault (“Microbiota Vault”, in free translation), the project, which is in the pilot phase, was inspired by another similar initiative: a bank of more than 1.1 million types of seeds from all over the planet that it is deposited in Svalbard, an archipelago that belongs to Norway.
The purpose of seed bank is to store these materials in a safe place – and thus have a reserve that guarantees the supply of food in the future in case these species disappear from nature for some reason, which would jeopardize food security.
The same principle applies to the bacteria vault. Microbiologist Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, who leads the international initiative, explains to BBC News Brazil that the diversity of these microscopic beings has dropped dramatically in recent decades.
When studying indigenous peoples of the Amazon, he observed that the variety of bacteria they carry in the intestine was practically twice that detected in an individual from the United States (USA), who lives in a big city.
“When we look deeper, the villages that started to have contact with health services and started receiving antibiotics they also suffered a loss of bacterial diversity very quickly”, described the scientist, who is a professor at Rutgers University, in the USA.
The intestinal microbiota is a complex system of microorganisms that we carry in the digestive system. More recent estimates indicate that it is made up of 100 billion living beings, which are fundamental to our health.
This true microscopic city inside our bellies is composed of several species of bacteria. What researchers have begun to detect in recent years is precisely the loss of this diversity: different types of microorganisms are gradually disappearing.
This loss is related to a series of chronic diseases, which are becoming a growing problem, especially in urban environments of industrialized countries.
Microbiologist Christian Hoffmann, who is currently the only Brazilian representative collaborating with the Microbiota Vault, explained that this disappearance of bacteria is not limited to our intestines.
“In the same way that we are losing plants and animals, we are also going through a process of extinction of microorganisms that live within us and also in nature”, he warned.
“This is a serious problem, which occurs very quickly”, added the researcher, who is a professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP).
Hoffmann explained that the process of extinction of microorganisms began with the Industrial Revolution, between the 18th and 19th centuries.
“From that time on, we managed to better refrigerate and preserve food and make it more become available in large quantities. Meats, for example, have become cheap, affordable and easy to keep at home,” he said.
“On the one hand, this represented more security for a large part of the population. On the other hand, it has profoundly altered our eating habits,” she added.
And these changes in diet have deepened even more in recent decades, with the greater availability of industrialized, ultra-processed or low nutritional value foods.
“In the last 20 years, the Brazilian significantly reduced the consumption of beanswhich was one of the staples of food in the country and one of the main sources of dietary fiber,” recalled Hoffmann.
Fibers are essential for our health. A part of them serves as food for the bacteria that make up the intestinal microbiota. In balance, these microscopic beings help us to take advantage of the nutrients in our food.
The other portion of fibers is essential to form a fecal cake with good consistency, able to pass through the intestine and be expelled without major difficulties.
Scholars point to a second reason behind the silent extinction of microbes: the advent of antibiotics. This class of drugs is essential for fighting bacterial infections – and has saved millions of lives since its discovery in 1928 – but its effect on the microbiota can be harmful.
You antibiotics work like a pump: kill any type of bacteria. When we take such a medicine, we cause an imbalance in the microbiota. The death of “good” bacteria decreases diversity and can open doors for “bad” microorganisms.
The third factor behind the phenomenon is the increase in cesarean births. When the baby passes through the birth canal during normal or natural birth, it “takes for itself” many of the bacteria from the mother’s body. This set will serve to form the microbiota of the newborn.
This does not occur in Caesarean. In this procedure, the baby is born from a cut in the womb and has almost no contact with the woman’s microorganisms.
None of these three elements is inherently evil. Industrialization allows people to have more access to food. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections that are potentially fatal. A cesarean section represents a safe delivery alternative on occasions when there is a risk for the woman or the baby.
But they all produce this side effect on bacterial diversity – and this impact is greatest in rich and highly industrialized countrieswhere access to many of these amenities is easier compared to rural or remote communities.
“To top it off, we are destroying ecosystems. And the fundamental unit of any environment is the bacterium. So, this extinction that is happening to our intestinal microbiota occurs in the soil, in the water and throughout the natural environment”, added Dominguez-Bello.
Dominguez-Bello cited that there are two types of evidence on the impact of the silent extinction of microbes in the human body.
“The first one comes from epidemiology. The data show a significant association between being born by cesarean section or the use of antibiotics with a higher incidence of some diseases, such as asthma”, he said.
“The second evidence comes from animal experiments. When we interfere with the microbiota of very young guinea pigs, they generally get bigger and more obese throughout their lives”, exemplified the microbiologist.
These preliminary investigations also show that transplanting a microbiota from a healthy animal to one that is sick can also function as a kind of treatment – and improve chronic and inflammatory conditions such as obesity, diabetes and asthma.
For Hoffmann, all these observations only reinforce the dependence between bacteria and other living beings. “THE life on the planet depends on this balance and of this joint development of various organisms. The bacteria depend on us and we depend on them”, he indicated.
Although there is a consensus among scientists about the importance of the microbiota, there is a whole microscopic universe to be explored – after all, we still do not know the function of each of the species, what they mean for our health and what they can represent as opportunities for future treatments.
Therefore, the risk of extinction of these microorganisms is a threat to our own species. If they disappear before we know what they’re doing, that represents a missed opportunity for deal with present and future problems (such as the increase in chronic and inflammatory diseases, for example).
And that’s exactly where the Microbiota Vault comes in: the proposal is to preserve samples of various species of microorganisms in a safe place. In principle, the initiative has two main foci. First, the collection of human feces from various parts of the world. Second, storing foods fermented by different types of bacteria, such as cheese and yogurt.
“Our goal is to encourage researchers of different nationalities to create their own collections, which will be stored in their countries of origin”, described Dominguez-Bello.
Thus, “they will also be able to send part of these samples to the Microbiota Vault, which will serve as a backup. They will be kept under two conditions. First, that only the responsible scientist access the content. Second, we will have authorization to carry out the genetic sequencing of that species, and this information will be freely available to the public”, he added.
At first, the vault will be located in Switzerland – but, due to the recent instabilities related to the covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, those responsible for the project are also studying other options, such as keeping more copies in other territories, such as Greenland or Argentine Patagonia.
Hoffmann considered that it is time to do something to deal with the extinction of microbes. “If we delay, it will be too late“, he believes.
“For me, the vault represents hope for the future health of humanity and the planet itself,” concluded Dominguez-Bello.
