Bacteria frozen in ancient underground ice cave found to be resistant against 10 modern antibiotics

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : The team drilled a 25-meter ice core from the area of the cave known as the Great Hall, representing a 13,000-year timeline.
56% : "If melting ice releases these microbes, these genes could spread to modern bacteria, adding to the global challenge of antibiotic resistance," Purcarea said.
51% : Ice caves are just one of the environments hosting a variety of microorganisms that represent a source of genetic diversity that has not yet been studied extensively.
50% : Now, researchers in Romania tested antibiotic resistance profiles of a bacterial strain that until recently was hidden in a 5,000-year-old layer of ice of an underground ice cave - and found it could be an opportunity for developing new strategies to prevent the rise of antibiotic resistance and study how resistance naturally evolves and spreads.
48% : "Studying microbes such as Psychrobacter SC65A.3 retrieved from millennia-old cave ice deposits reveals how antibiotic resistance evolved naturally in the environment, long before modern antibiotics were ever used," said Purcarea.
47% : To avoid contamination, the ice fragments taken from the core were placed in sterile bags and kept frozen on their way back to the lab.
45% : "The Psychrobacter SC65A.3 bacterial strain isolated from Scarisoara Ice Cave, despite its ancient origin, shows resistance to multiple modern antibiotics and carries over 100 resistance-related genes," said author Dr Cristina Purcarea, a senior scientist at the Institute of Biology Bucharest of the Romanian Academy.

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