There’s gold in them there… MICROBES?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Over time, germs become resistant to our antibiotic hand sanitizers. Yuck! Can we stop them by… panning for ancient organisms?!
Enter Marcelo Torres and team at the University of Pennsylvania. They studied archaea – single-celled microbes that live in hot springs, salty lakes, and deep oceans.
Using machine learning, they scanned hundreds of archaeal proteomes. These are like blueprints for proteins.
This search unearthed over TWELVE THOUSAND potential antimicrobial molecules, called archaeasins. Eighty were made in the lab.
And? Over ninety percent fought infection-causing bacteria! In mice, archaeasins worked as well as traditional antibiotics!
Turns out, these ancient microbes are a real motherload!
Reference: Torres, M.D.T., Wan, F. & de la Fuente-Nunez, C. Deep learning reveals antibiotics in the archaeal proteome. Nat Microbiol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-02061-0