--Must See--

Bioinformatics Summer Internship 2024 With Hands-On-Training + Project / Dissertation - 30 Days, 3 Months & 6 Months Duration

Two new species of bacteria found in cooling towers and hot tubs of Tennessee

Middle Tennessee State University and Tennessee Technological University student and faculty researchers have discovered two new species of bacteria found in a cooling tower and hot tub in Putnam County, Tennessee.

And the discovery may provide clues to new pathways of disease and treatment, said the lead scientists, whose nearly 20-year research endeavor has been published in Genome Announcements and International Journal of Systematic Microbiology.

Including nearly $1 million in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant funding, MTSU and Tennessee Tech researchers and students used a variety of microscopic and genomic techniques to describe these organisms, which have been named “Candidatus Berkiella aquae” and “Candidatus Berkiella cookevillensis.”

MTSU professor Mary Farone named them in honor of the city of Cookeville, where the cooling tower and hot tub were located. “We are hoping that the genetic assessments will lead to how it’s getting into the nucleus and maybe using that to figure out how to take things into a cancer cell that you want to target, that would be the ultimate good thing about it,” said Berk.

“The significance of this work is we’re finding new organisms in cooling

towers and in constructed environments like hot tubs and showers, but primarily in cooling towers.”

Along with the Cookeville samples, researchers took samples from cooling towers primarily in Sparta, Tennessee, and Murfreesboro as well as in Texas and New Jersey.

“Neither of the new bacteria are currently associated with respiratory disease as far as we know, but their small size, location in the nucleus and failure to grow by conventional laboratory methods may prevent their detection,” the professor said. “However, their unusual movement into and replication to large numbers in the cell nucleus represents a novel bacterial cause of cell death.”

Although other bacteria have been shown to infect the nuclei of certain cells, the new bacteria reproduce to high numbers in the nucleus, killing host cells — including in one case, human cancer cells — in less than five days, she said.

“Amoebae are the organisms also responsible for transmission of bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease, a pneumonia illness first described in 1976,” Farone said.

“Although the bacteria responsible for Legionnaires’ disease do not infect the cell nucleus but divide in cytoplasm of human cells, genomic analysis shows these two newly described intranuclear bacteria share some of the same disease-causing genes with Legionnaires’ disease bacteria.”

Farone, Berk and the other lead researchers’ findings include outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease being reported in New York City and Flint, Michigan, in the past year and are typically associated with human-constructed water systems such as cooling towers. Berk, who worked at Tech and MTSU, joined Drs. Mary and Anthony Farone and Anthony Newsome at MTSU and Tennessee Tech biology associate professor John Gunderson in playing vital roles in the study.

At MTSU, former grad student Yohannes Mehari and molecular bioscience doctoral candidate Brock Arivett have proven to be invaluable in the research experience, the study leaders said.

“Hopefully, this will be important for us to be able to determine the way to transport things into the nucleus for future studies,” Arivett said.

The project began with an ecological study of amoebae and bacteria in natural versus human-constructed environments.

Peace-lover, creative, smart and intelligent. Prapti is a foodie, music buff and a travelholic. After leaving a top-notch full time corporate job, she now works as an Online Editor for Biotecnika. Keen on making a mark in the scientific publishing industry, she strives to find a work-life balance. Follow her for more updates!