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Scientists Reveal Their Plan To Counter Global Pandemics With A Noah's Ark … A Bacteria An ark of sprouts at Noah might not seem to be the most appealing plan, but scientists believe that such a collection could help us to protect ourselves from the threat of uncontrollable pandemics caused by the effects of industrialization.
According to a group of researchers, we are facing a "growing global health crisis" because the microbes that live in our bodies and help us fight against diseases are disappearing due to increasing urbanization, increased dependence on antibiotics and processed foods.
Microbi-whata?
Microbiota are the ecological communities of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, viruses and other colonists living in or on our bodies. They are essential for immunity, nutrition and hormonal activity. Our microbiomes are largely passed from mother to child over generations and have an impact on human development.
"These microbes have evolved with humans over hundreds of millennia. They help us digest food, strengthen our immune system and protect us from invading germs, "said Maria Dominguez-Bello, Rutgers – New Brunswick Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology. "Over a handful of generations, we have witnessed an astounding loss of microbial diversity linked to a global outbreak of immune and other disorders."
While microbial diversity is declining in the industrialized world, people living in remote areas do not face the same problem. Amerindians in South America, for example, have twice as much microbial diversity as Americans do.
Scientists are now calling for biobanking initiatives to collect samples from people living in isolated communities, to allow for a more robust collection of germs and bacteria that can be used in the future to fight disease by reintroducing microbes lost in the population. Their results are in the journal Science.
The group compares the loss of microbial diversity with climate change, warning that with more than half of the global population living in urban areas, there is concern that endangered microbes may be the ones that contribute to the prevention of disease. diseases, which means that global pandemics may worsen the future.
"We need to preserve the diversity of ancestral microbes from globally diversified human populations and include in particular those who have been least exposed to urbanization," says the study.
The group of scientists modeled their idea on Noah's Ark on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a bank stocking plants and plants around the world to prepare for a catastrophic scenario.
Collections have already started, but the number of samples collected from traditional populations living in developing countries is insufficient. These collections present challenges, such as access to isolated communities and limitations in classifying such a large diversity of microbiota species.
"We owe to future generations the microbes that colonized our ancestors for at least 200,000 years of human evolution. We have to start before it's too late, "the scientists warn.
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