Bacteria-killing virus could help revive Cooum, Adyar, B Canal

Chennai: Imagine a Cooum running with clear water. Or the Adyar or Buckingham Canal free of pollution. Results of research over 20 years at Lake Mendota in Wisconsin now holds out hope through a process called ‘phage therapy', where viruses are used to kill disease-causing bacteria.

Scientists from IIT Madras and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, said cutting-edge machine learning-based tools helped uncover viruses in microbiomes in nearly 500 fresh water samples collected over two decades from Lake Mendota. The results of the longest DNA-based monitoring of a natural environment were published in the scientific journal ‘Nature Microbiology'. The researchers reconstructed more than 1.3 million virus genomes in freshwater lakes.

"The research can benefit society and the environment. The data we have can help in ‘phage therapy', which uses specific viruses called phages to target and kill disease-causing bacteria," said Dr Karthik Anantharaman, visiting professor at Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI, IIT Madras, and an associate professor of microbial and viral ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. "The data has the potential to combat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections," he said.

"Mapping of microbiomes in Cooum, Adyar or the Buckingham Canal can help us control pollution in these rivers," he said. "For example, viruses could be used to prevent harmful algal blooms or bacterial outbreaks (like the green slime seen in polluted lakes), ensuring healthier recreational lakes."

In the long run, the change of microbiomes over time will help prevent the harmful impacts of climate change, he added. Viruses follow seasonal and yearly cycles, with many reappearing year after year, showing remarkable predictability, he said. "They evolve over time, with some genes becoming more dominant due to natural selection. We have 578 examples of viral genes that help with critical processes such as photosynthesis and methane use. They can even ‘steal' genes from their hosts and repurpose them for their benefit. We can put this to good use to stop damaging impacts," he said.