but almost nothing is known
about them. Rather than go out
himself and gather sponges – a
time-consuming and expensive
business – Murphy piloted a citizen
science project asking divers
to collect tiny samples for him
while they’re out and about. Last
summer he sent out collecting kits
and got a great response, receiving
more than 40 nubbins of sponge in
the mail.
This year he’s rolling the project
out across the Great Lakes and
hopes to sample as many sites at
possible. Ultimately, Murphy wants
to map the distribution of sponges
and bacteria across the lakes so
that future efforts can be more
effective and will zero in on fruitful
spots, both in the Great Lakes and
beyond.
DIVERSE OCEANS
When bioprospectors first turned
to the oceans in the 1950s, their
initial targets were coral reefs.
These bustling ecosystems,
packed with species, are a logical
place to look and they’ve yielded
many natural products, including
some that made it to the end of
the drug development pipeline.
Early on was chemotherapy
agent cytarabine, approved in the
US in 1969 and originally found
in a sponge on a Florida Keys
reef. Another cancer-fighting
agent called trabectedin, from a
Caribbean sea squirt, has been
used in Europe since 2007 and in
the US since 2015.
Elsewhere, other researchers
are hunting for novel chemistry
even further beneath the waves.
An international team called
PharmaSea, led by Prof Marcel
Jaspars, is searching for new
antibiotics in the deep sea,
including at the bottom of trenches
- the deepest parts of the oceans.
Jaspars describes these as
‘negative islands’ sticking down
into the seabed, instead of pointing
up. “It’s possible there have been
millions of years of separate
evolution in each trench,” he says.
Jaspars and his collaborators send
unmanned probes miles down
into the depths to bring back
MARVELLOUS MICROBES
Vancomycin was
introduced
in 1972 against
drug-resistant strains
of ‘superbugs’. After
seven years, bacteria
began evolving
resistance to the
drug.Microbes living in the ocean collectively weigh the equivalent of
35 African elephants for every person alive today.==
In the last 30
years, around
half of all new
medicines
released have
been based on
molecules
found in the
natural world.In 2011, the
global market in
drugs initially
discovered in
the sea was
worth around
$4.8bn.By 2050, 10 million
people could die per
year (or roughly one
every three seconds) if
no action is taken to
combat antibiotic
resistance. That’s
more than the death
toll from cancer and
diabetes combined.US$92tn is the estimated annual cost of global
inaction against antibiotic resistance by 2050.63,000 tons
Roughly half of all antibiotics used
worldwide are given to food-industry
animals to prevent infection and speed up
growth rates.72%
In a survey of 139
academic studies, 72
per cent showed a link
between antibiotic use
in farm animals and
drug resistance in
humans.In the US, between 1997
and 2010, 60 per cent of
cases of sore throats
were treated with
antibiotics, even though
only 10 per cent were
caused by bacterial
infection, at
a cost of $500m.Bacteria can help us beat disease, but they can cause problems too
US$92, ,
, ,
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