Scientists are creating a ‘global bank’ of feces – 01/30/2023 – Science

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 large 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 for various non-communicable chronic diseases, such as obesity and asthma.

But what is the importance of creating this stool bank? And what’s behind this widespread disappearance of bacteria around the world?

a silent extinction

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 which is deposited in Svalbard, an archipelago that belongs to Norway.

The objective of the 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 the food security of a or more people.

The same principle applies to the bacteria vault. Microbiologist Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, who leads the international initiative, explains to BBC News Brasil that the diversity of these microscopic beings has dropped dramatically in recent decades.

When studying indigenous peoples of the Amazon, she observed that the variety of bacteria they carry in their intestines was practically twice that detected in an individual from the United States who lives in a big city.

“And, when we looked deeper, the villages that began to have contact with health services and started to receive antibiotics also suffered a loss of bacterial diversity very quickly”, describes the scientist, who is a professor at Rutgers University, in the United States. .

It is worth remembering here that the intestinal microbiota is a complex system of microorganisms that we carry in the digestive system. More recent estimates point out that it is composed of 100 trillion 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 micro-organisms are gradually disappearing.

And, as you will see later, this loss is related to a series of chronic diseases, which are becoming an increasing problem, especially in urban environments in industrialized countries.

Microbiologist Christian Hoffmann, who for now is the only Brazilian representative collaborating with the Microbiota Vault, explains 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 micro-organisms that live inside us and also in nature”, he warns.

“This is a serious problem, which occurs very quickly”, adds the researcher, who is a professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP).

But what is behind this disappearance of bacteria?

Amenities of Modern Life

Hoffmann explains that the process of extinction of microorganisms began with the Industrial Revolution, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

“From that time on, we managed to refrigerate and preserve food better and make it available in large quantities. Meat, for example, became cheap, accessible and easy to keep at home”, he says.

“On the one hand, this represented more security for a large part of the population. On the other hand, it profoundly altered our eating habits”, he adds.

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, Brazilians have considerably reduced their consumption of beans, which was one of the mainstays of the country’s diet and one of the main sources of fiber in the diet”, recalls 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 part of the fibers is essential to form a fecal cake with good consistency, able to pass through the intestine and be expelled through the anus without great difficulties.

Academics 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.

That’s because antibiotics work like a pump: they kill any type of bacteria, regardless of whether they are malevolent (such as those that are causing the infection) or beneficial (such as the species that inhabit the intestine and help us to digest).

That is: when we take such a medicine, we cause an imbalance in the microbiota. The death of the “good” bacteria decreases diversity and can make way for “bad” microorganisms to take over the piece.

The third factor behind the phenomenon is the increase in cesarean deliveries. That’s because, when the baby passes through the birth canal during normal or natural birth, he “takes for himself” many of the bacteria from the mother’s body. This set will serve to form the microbiota of the newborn from then on.

This does not occur in the cesarean section. In this sterile 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 bad. Industrialization allows people to have more access to food. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections that are potentially fatal. The cesarean section represents a safe delivery alternative on occasions when there is a risk for the woman or the baby.

All of them, however, have this knock-on effect on bacterial diversity—and this impact is greater in rich, highly industrialized countries, where access to many of these amenities is easier, compared to rural or remote communities.

“To top it all off, we are destroying ecosystems. And the fundamental unit of any environment is the bacteria. So, this extinction that is happening to our intestinal microbiota occurs in the soil, in the water and throughout the natural environment”, adds Dominguez-Bello . The researcher also participates in the documentary “The Invisible Extinction” (“The Invisible Extinction”, in free translation), which deals precisely with this subject.

But what are the repercussions of microbial extinction on our health?

The rise of chronic diseases

Dominguez-Bello cites that there are two types of evidence on the impact of the silent extinction of microbes in the human body.

“The first of them 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 says.

The researcher considers that the studies find connections, but do not determine a cause and effect relationship. In other words, these works still do not allow us to understand in depth how one thing (antibiotics or cesarean section) causes the other (diseases).

“The second evidence comes from experiments with animals. When you interfere with the microbiota of very young guinea pigs, they generally get bigger and more obese throughout their lives”, exemplifies 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 (such as ourselves).

“Life on the planet depends on this balance and joint development of various organisms. The bacteria depend on us and we depend on them”, he reasons.

Preserve what we don’t (yet) know

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 opportunities they can represent for future treatments.

Therefore, the risk of extinction of these micro-organisms is a threat to our own species. If they disappear from the map before we know what they are doing, it represents a lost chance to 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. This is a simple method to obtain part of the intestinal microbiota.

Second, stock food fermented by different types of bacteria, such as cheese and yogurt.

“Our goal is to encourage researchers of various nationalities to create their own collections, which will be stored in their countries of origin”, describes Dominguez-Bello.

“From there they will also be able to send part of these samples to the Microbiota Vault safe, which will serve as a backup copy. They will be kept free of charge under two conditions. First, that only the responsible scientist can access that content. Second, that we will have authorization to access it. carry out the genetic sequencing of that species, and this information will be freely available to the public”, he adds.

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 thinks it’s 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”, concludes Dominguez-Bello.

– This text was published in