New bacteria, and two potential antibiotics, discovered in soil
16 comments
·September 24, 2025w10-1
dillydogg
Spoiler, I haven't read the article, but my understanding is cardiolipin targeting antibiotics have failed in the past because our mitochondria are enriched for it. (Which makes sense here because the mitochondria are derived from ancient bacteria). I'm sure there is potential for optimization for medical applications, but we will have to be very careful for adverse effects.
kragen
Newly discovered potential antibiotics are actually pretty common, and they would be critical to solving the antibiotic-resistance menace. But no major new families of antibiotics have been brought to market since about 01962, although a dozen or so families were discovered over the previous 20 years. (Or, maybe one new family was.) That was when drug regulation changed dramatically in the US with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefauver%E2%80%93Harris_Amendm..., for example requiring clinical trials to provide evidence that drugs were effective, rather than just safe. It's also when they started outlawing recreational drugs; the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs wasn't until 01961, and it didn't cover amphetamines, downers, or psychedelics.
Because so much of 20th-century drug research happened in the US (because the US had capitalism) the clinical-trials requirement and the Drug War there had an outsized effect, and other countries copied them afterwards.
One particular case that I studied was Zasloff's "magainin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magainin which was denied licensing even though the clinical trials found that it was both safe and effective. The problem was that it wasn't more effective than the existing standard of care; it was only equally effective.
It seems certain that the Kefauver–Harris Drug Act has prevented innumerable cases of useless or harmful drugs from being marketed. But, looking at the history of drug development, it also seems clear that the rapid drug development in the decades up to 01962 virtually halted at that time, and the absence of the drugs that would have been discovered since then has surely killed many more people than the inadvertent use of harmful drugs ever could have.
fgfarben
My pet idea is that Western societies should prescribe antibiotics at random to a different tiny fraction of the elderly population each month / year.
People who suffer from unexplained / untreatable diseases like arthritis or MS might get some relief, while there would be an added pressure on the pharma industry to innovate in antibiotic development by accelerating the loss of existing antibiotic efficacy through the evolution of resistance.
ipaddr
Horrible idea antibiotics are not toys and have side effects. Don't use elderly people for experiments when they are the one group least able to handle this.
You want to cause current antibiotics to be less useful so pharma will invest more? Just allow generic versions.
If you want to pressure the pharma industry use laws.
kragen
It's a promising idea, but probably wouldn't help with drug discovery.
pfdietz
The paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-025-02810-w
One of the antibiotics targets a protein that is also essential in mitochondria, so it's not a good candidate for a drug. The other targets bacterial cell membranes and showed no resistance developing, which seems more promising.
DaveZale
Look at the 1940s/1950s when some classic antibiotics were discovered. Pharma workers taking vacations overseas were asked to bring soil samples back to the lab. Great reading if you enjoy science history.
https://asm.org/articles/2023/june/hunting-for-antibiotics-i...
kjkjadksj
There is so much potential in sampling soil. Spinosad was found like this as well only a few decades ago.
rogerrogerr
> hundreds of complete bacterial genomes never seen before
Welllll that doesn’t sound like a great idea
choilive
There are millions on the lower bound of bacteria species we havn't identified, trillions on the upper bound. Unknown bacteria are literally everywhere, but the simple act of finding and sequencing them is nothing to be afraid of.
throwup238
Also known as biological dark matter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_dark_matter
kulahan
Meh, they came from the soil. It's always been here, just never seen by human eyes. That's true of lots and lots of bacteria though - we find new species pretty much every single time we take a stomach sample from someone, let alone random forest soil.
PaulHoule
Many bacteria have commensal lifestyles —- scientists don’t feel in control if they can’t culture bacteria in isolation but in nature many bacteria aren’t metabolically complete and son’s live in isolation.
This should be re-titled something like: with 200x longer sequences and making products without culturing, dirt can make antibiotic gold.
The two prospects:
Erutacidin, disrupts bacterial membranes through an uncommon interaction with the lipid cardiolipin and is effective against even the most challenging drug-resistant bacteria.
trigintamicin, acts on a protein-unfolding motor known as ClpX, a rare antibacterial target
The difficulty with bacterial DNA is that they have common elements and actively share DNA to boot. Sequencing only short sections make genome assembly unreliable. 200x longer sequences makes much more accurate genomes.
Then even if you find genes, we can't usually culture enough bacteria to make the product (typically instead injecting the sequences into bacteria we can culture). So being able to make the product without culturing the organism is key.