Bacteria discovered in Algerian caves that can break down gluten

When the French novelist Jules Verne wrote his famous novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth," some did not believe that there was abundant life in the underworld, and it took several decades before biologists began exploring life underground in earnest, and currently we know that at least 30% of all living things The minute lives in the depths of the earth.

An international team of researchers from the Universities of Umeå in Sweden and Constantine in Algeria recently found bacteria bearing distinctive characteristics in previously unexplored Algerian caves, located at deep depths in Algeria, and published the results of the research in the journal "Microbiology Spectrum" on October 10 This October.

"This study demonstrates the capabilities of microorganisms on our planet," says Natoshka Lee, a researcher in the Department of Ecology at Umeå University, in the press release published on Phys.org - on October 14. Through the researchers' painstaking research efforts, we have been able to detect a small portion of all the microbes on the planet."

Bacteria in the caves of Algeria

In the past decade, cave research has received great attention, and North Africa - and Algeria in particular - possesses unique and unexplored caves, such as the two deepest caves: Anu Evlis and Anu Boswell, and it also has the largest network of underground caves in Africa, the Boumaza caves, which have one of the deepest caves. gypsum in the world, a laurel "how".

So far, the microbiomes in these Algerian caves have not been explored, except for those in the Shaab Cave, so the researchers isolated and classified 250 bacterial strains from sedimentary rocks in 10 Algerian caves located at different depths, up to 450 meters below the surface of the earth.

The researchers classified these strains according to their beneficial biological potential, such as antibiotic sensitivity and ability to break down lactose and gluten, two sources of common gastrointestinal disorders.

Physical and chemical analyzes showed that 9 caves contain less than 2 milligrams of total organic carbon per liter, which means that food is difficult to reach for microorganisms, and the temperature in the caves varied from 3.2 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius, and the humidity ranged between 40 and 99.99% .

Despite these difficult environmental conditions and the difficulty of food access to microorganisms, scientists have found that these organisms are remarkably diverse, and show different types of adaptation to the nature of caves.

“We found strains of bacteria that produce antimicrobial substances and can break down gluten,” says Natoshka Lee. “Gluten is a substance that can cause inflammation in the gut, and these bacteria can adapt to the harsh conditions in the human digestive system.”

These bacteria belong to Bacillus bacteria, which play a major role in the ecosystem, on the one hand they may cause many diseases and on the other hand they may be beneficial.

The importance of searching inside caves

Research on life forms underground can give us information about how life evolved on Earth, and may be evidence of the existence of other life under the surface of various celestial bodies, such as Mars.

Later, researchers will investigate the possibility of using the bacteria extracted from the caves in the biotechnology industry, as anti-gluten.