Bacterial strain from 5,000-year-old cave ice shows resistance against 10 modern antibiotics

Bacteria have evolved to adapt to all of Earth’s most extreme conditions, from scorching heat to temperatures well below freezing. Ice caves are just one of the environments hosting a variety of microorganisms that represent a source of genetic diversity that remains poorly studied. Now Romanian researchers tested the antibiotic resistance profiles of a bacterial strain that until recently was hidden in a 5,000-year-old layer of ice in an underground ice cave. They found that this could be an opportunity to develop new strategies to prevent the rise of antibiotic resistance and to study how resistance evolves and spreads naturally. They reported their discovery in Frontiers in Microbiology.