This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A silent, long-running competition has been taking place in Swiss alpine lakes for millions of years, killing trillions of organisms every day without anyone noticing. This competition between bacteria and viruses pushes both into a relentless evolutionary battle.
In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Anna Carratalà, a scientist at the EPFL Laboratory for Environmental Virology, and her team observed in the lab that alpine bacteria can resist attacks from a variety of bacteriophages (or phages), viruses that infect bacteria and use them as hosts to reproduce before destroying them. More surprisingly, the researchers also observed that some of these alpine bacteria could reduce the ability of very different viruses not naturally present in alpine lakes to cause infections, suggesting broader antiviral properties. Alpine lakes are subject to extreme conditions: low nutrient concentrations, low temperatures, ice cover in winter and high UV radiation in summer.
In these harsh environments, where few animals and plants can survive, microbial life is dominated by bacteria and viruses, which form large communities and play key roles in the ecosystems. The researchers wanted to determine whether the bacterial communities least susceptible to phage infections in alpine lakes could also fight viruses not naturally found in these environments. To this end, Carratalà and her team took water samples from 24 alpine lakes in Valais.
They took these samples to the laboratory and obtained 200 different bacterial strains, which they used to create experimental microbial communities. They then exposed these communities to three types of viruses: echovirus 11, influenza A (responsible for the flu) and potato virus X. These viruses are very distinct from those found in alpine lakes and serve as models to test the antiviral properties of bacteria.
"Earlier studies revealed that bacteria can 'remember' past viral infections through information stored in their DNA, helping them defend themselves against future attacks," says the researcher. When exposed to a mixture of alpine bacteriophages, bacteria showed varying degrees of susceptibility to viral infections. The production of enzymes may also help neutralize the ability of bacteriophages to cause infections.
However, the exact molecular mechanisms that underpin the antiviral properties of the bacteria isolated from the Swiss Alps are still unknown. Applications in human health might still be far in the future, but Carratalà and her team have already observed promising results in fighting plant viruses that infect crops. For instance, these findings open up the possibility of using alpine bacteria to fight viruses in hydroponic systems, where crops grow without soil using a mineral nutrient solution in water, like tomatoes grown commercially in greenhouses.
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