Bacteria found at Rajgir hot spring shows antibacterial activity Premium

Discovering antibiotic-producing bacteria in hot springs, like those in India, offers hope in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

To live a cozy life on the earth, a temperature of around 25° to 30° C is ideal. But during a heat wave, where temperatures can cross 40° C, the consequences can be deadly. Humans and most complex multicellular organisms are not built to tolerate such heat.

That doesn’t mean no living thing can, however.

Bacteria called thermophiles (meaning “heat lovers”) have been known to tolerate 45° to 70° C of heat. Such a high temperature can give human skin third-degree burns.

While such an environment may seem hellish to people, thermophilic bacteria see an opportunity. Places on the earth with temperatures like this — including hot springs, deep-sea thermal vents, and compost piles — offer a mineral-rich neighbourhood with relatively few competing life forms. To gain an edge, some thermophilic bacteria produce potent antibiotics as weapons to neutralise their competitors.

This is exactly why scientists have deemed hot springs around the world to be unexplored mines of antibiotic-producing bacteria. For example, thermophiles isolated from hot springs in the Asir and Jizan regions of Saudi Arabia have been found to produce a variety of potent antibiotics effective against gram-positive pathogenic bacteria.

The hot springs of India are not very well studied, however.

But driven by their putative value, researchers at the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in Tamil Nadu examined the Rajgir hot spring lake in Nalanda district of Bihar. Their findings were published last month in the Indian Journal of Microbiology.