60,000-Year-Old Preserved Wood Has Ancient Bacteria That Could Create New Medicines

April 8, 2020 Topic: Health Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: TechnologyHealthBacteriaForrestWood

60,000-Year-Old Preserved Wood Has Ancient Bacteria That Could Create New Medicines

The site of the forest, which now lies 60 feet underwater off Alabama’s coast in Mobile Bay, has been the focus of an intense study funded by the NOAA. A team of scientists from Northeastern University and the University of Utah was able to bring up pieces of wood to further study.

Scientists believe that new lifesaving medicines could be culled from a 60,000-year-old bald cypress forest.

This isn’t, however, any regular forest. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which recently published an article about this particular forest, it flourished on the banks of a prehistoric river near the Gulf of Mexico. Over time, these gigantic trees grew and died, eventually falling over and becoming entombed in peat and sediment.

As sea levels rose and the coastline receded, this once-flourishing ancient forest was buried beneath the sea surface off the coast of what is now the state of Alabama. The forest had remained undisturbed there for many millennia.

Recently, however, intensifying storms like the 2004 Hurricane Ivan along the coast have scoured the seafloor, which has now exposed this ancient submarine forest – and perhaps also revealing important secrets to creating new future medicines.

The site of the forest, which now lies 60 feet underwater off Alabama’s coast in Mobile Bay, has been the focus of an intense study funded by the NOAA. A team of scientists from Northeastern University and the University of Utah was able to bring up pieces of wood to further study.

Despite being 60,000 years old, the wood was exceptionally well preserved, as it had been buried under layers of sediment that prevented oxygen from decomposing it. It was from this ancient wood where the scientists were able to discover shipworms, which are fairly common wherever there is wood in the oceans.

But what really caught their eye were the special types of bacteria found from the shipworms that had been living inside the wood. They had never been seen before. Currently, scientists are focusing on 12 of the bacterial strains, and they are undergoing DNA sequencing.

According to the NOAA, previous research on shipworm bacteria has already paid off by having at least one antibiotic being studied as a drug to treat parasitic infections. Scientists have voiced optimism that more novel medicines can be created via these bacterial strains.

Moreover, the scientists will study the new bacterial samples to see whether they can be applied in the production of food, textiles, animal feeds, fine chemicals, and renewable fuels, according to the NOAA.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV.