Scientists to extract ancient bacteria from Batagai depression in bid to create new antibiotic range

Researchers from St Petersburg Institute of Experimental Medicine are to study viruses and bacteria extracted from permafrost deposits of a giant thermokarst depression, known as the Batagai crater, to see if they might serve modern medicine in producing a new range of antibiotics. 

The tadpole-shaped depression near the village of Batagai, some 660km northeast of Yakutsk, appeared in the late 1960s when the forest in the area was cleared away. 

It has been growing ever since - lately increasing in size at up to 30 metres a year - and is now one kilometre long, 800 metres wide and over a hundred metres deep.

The depression is a treasure trove for scientists around the globe, as it contains ‘some of the best preserved and oldest frozen soils ever to be found in permafrost regions’, according to Professor Julian Murton, from the University of Sussex.

Scientists to extract ancient bacteria and viruses from Batagai depression in bid to create new antibiotic range. Pictures: The Siberian Times, Alexander Gabyshev

Cones of permafrost from the Batagai megaslump were drilled last year; this month the studies will begin in laboratories of Yakutsk and St-Petersburg. 

The hope is that micro-organisms preserved in samples aged up to 200,000 years old might be useful in creating a new range of antibiotics. 

‘This March I am flying to Yakutsk where we’ll select fragments of permafrost kerns to start working with them, using microbiological and molecular genetic methods. We are keen to get practical results as soon as possible.

'We see that the situation with antibiotic resistance is very difficult indeed, and it is in the interests of both us (as scientists) and society to obtain prototypes of drugs for the treatment of hospital-obtained infections, and then bring them to production’, said Dr Artemy Goncharov, head of the Laboratory of Functional Genomics and Proteomics of Microorganisms at the Institute of Experimental Medicine.

Inside the Batagai depression in Yakutia. Video: The Siberian Times

Several other teams - in Russia and in the UK - are studying the permafrost samples from the Batagai depression.

The research centres include the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Perm Federal Research Center, the Perm Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms, the Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University and the University of Sussex (Britain).

The Batagai 'crater', Yakutia. Pictures: V.V. Kunitsky, The Siberian Times