Scarisoara Ice Cave in Romania.
Credit: Paun V.I.
As every schoolboy knows, Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic when the fungus Penicillium contaminated a Petri dish in which he had been culturing bacteria. What Fleming had discovered was a naturally occurring antibacterial substance produced by the fungus.
Such compounds are produced by fungi as part of their evolutionary arms race with the bacteria in their environment, and there is a whole range of them, many still awaiting discovery. On the other side of this arms race, bacteria evolve resistance.
It is a struggle that has been going on for hundreds of millions of years, ever since fungi evolved — and perhaps even earlier between ancestral eukaryotes and bacteria. Modern medical use of antibiotics has simply accelerated this ancient contest. We are now facing a major challenge in keeping pace with bacterial evolution, and hospitals in particular have become breeding grounds for resistant strains.
The tendency, therefore, is to assume that antibiotic resistance is a modern, anthropogenic phenomenon. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to learn that a bacterium, Psychrobacter SC65A.3, recovered from 5,000-year-old ice cores in a Romanian cave, has been found to be resistant to ten modern antibiotics.
Frankly, this is difficult to explain other than in terms of earlier evolutionary arms races. The discovery, by a team from the Institute of Biology, Bucharest, Romania, with colleagues from the University of Bucharest and the Universidad de Antofagasta, Chile, is reported in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
While this finding presents microbiologists with an intriguing puzzle, it presents creationists with a more acute problem. There simply should not be 5,000-year-old ice preserved in a Romanian cave — let alone viable bacteria within it — if the biblical narrative of a global flood some 4,000 years ago were historically accurate. And if a putative designer deity created bacteria already equipped with resistance to antibiotics that would not be synthesised by humans for millennia, that would imply pre-emptive malevolence.
This leaves modern Intelligent Design advocates with an uncomfortable choice: retreat into literalist theology and abandon scientific reasoning, or confront the implications of the evidence.
Scărișoara Ice Cave, Romania. Location & SettingThe discovery and its wider implications are explained in a Frontiers science news article.
Scărișoara Ice Cave is a remarkable underground ice cave in the Apuseni Mountains of north-western Romania, near the village of Gârda de Sus in Alba County. It lies at roughly 1,165 m above sea level within the Apuseni Natural Park. [1]
Geological Significance
The cave is one of Europe’s most outstanding karst formations, carved out of limestone and harbouring one of the continent’s largest and oldest underground glaciers. Ice within the cave has been preserved for several thousand years, with estimates suggesting some layers are over 3,000 – 4,000 years old — and possibly much older. [1]
Structure & Features
The cave extends to about 720 m in length and 105 m in depth. Beneath a steep entrance shaft, visitors descend metal stairways into spacious chambers such as the “Great Hall” and the aptly named “Church,” where ice stalagmites and dramatic formations abound. The ice volume is immense, covering tens of thousands of cubic metres. [1]
Climate & Ecology
Temperatures within the cave remain close to freezing year-round, enabling the persistence of the glacier and supporting specialised fauna, including tiny insects adapted to life in near-perpetual cold. [1]
Human History
Although the cave’s ice predates recorded history, it was first mentioned in 1863 and later studied in detail by Romanian speleologist Emil Racoviţă in the early 20th century. Portions of the site are reserved for scientific research, reflecting its value to geology, climate science, and microbiology. [1]
Present Relevance
Scărișoara remains a key location for studying past climates and biological preservation. The recent discovery of ancient, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in its ice underscores the cave’s scientific importance beyond speleology. [2]
Bacteria frozen in ancient underground ice cave found to be resistant against 10 modern antibiotics
Bacteria lurk everywhere. However, it’s only after researchers retrieve them from the most remote corners of the Earth that we can learn more about the risks and potentials they pose. When researchers examined a bacterial strain discovered in 5,000-year-old layers of cave ice, they found it resistant to 10 modern antibiotics and harboring even more genes related to resistance. Yet, it also showed promising enzymatic activities and could inhibit the growth of ‘superbugs’ resistant to multiple antibiotics. This highlights the importance of studying ancient bacteria to understand the natural evolution of antibiotic resistance and ways in which those bacteria could be used for future medical and biotechnological solutions, the researchers said.
Bacteria have evolved to adapt to all of Earth’s most extreme conditions, from scorching heat to temperatures well below zero. Ice caves are just one of the environments hosting a variety of microorganisms that represent a source of genetic diversity that has not yet been studied extensively.
Now, researchers in Romania tested antibiotic resistance profiles of a bacterial strain that until recently was hidden in a 5,000-year-old layer of ice of an underground ice cave – and found it could be an opportunity for developing new strategies to prevent the rise of antibiotic resistance and study how resistance naturally evolves and spreads. They reported their discovery in Frontiers in Microbiology.
The Psychrobacter SC65A.3 bacterial strain isolated from Scărișoara Ice Cave, despite its ancient origin, shows resistance to multiple modern antibiotics and carries over 100 resistance-related genes, but it can also inhibit the growth of several major antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’ and showed important enzymatic activities with important biotechnological potential.
Dr Cristina Purcarea, corresponding author
Department of Microbiology
Institute of Biology Bucharest of the Romanian Academy
Bucharest, Romania.
Ancient resistance to modern medication
Psychrobacter SC65A.3 is a strain of the genus Psychrobacter, which are bacteria adapted to cold environments. Some species can cause infections in humans or animals. Psychrobacter bacteria have biotechnological potential, but the antibiotic resistance profiles of these bacteria are largely unknown.Studying microbes such as Psychrobacter SC65A.3 retrieved from millennia-old cave ice deposits reveals how antibiotic resistance evolved naturally in the environment, long before modern antibiotics were ever used.
Dr Cristina Purcarea.
The team drilled a 25-meter ice core from the area of the cave known as the Great Hall, representing a 13,000-year timeline. To avoid contamination, the ice fragments taken from the core were placed in sterile bags and kept frozen on their way back to the lab. There, the researchers isolated various bacterial strains and sequenced their genome to determine which genes allow the strain to survive in low temperatures and which confer antimicrobial resistance and activity.
They tested for resistance of the SC65A strain against 28 antibiotics from 10 classes that are routinely used to or reserved for treating bacterial infections, including antibiotics that have previously been identified to possess resistance genes or mutations that give them the ability to resist drug effects. This way, they could test whether predicted mechanisms translated into measurable resistance.
The team drilled a 25-meter ice core from the area of the cave known as the Great Hall.Credit: Itcus C.The 10 antibiotics we found resistance to are widely used in oral and injectable therapies used to treat a range of serious bacterial infections in clinical practice.
Dr Cristina Purcarea.
Diseases such as tuberculosis, colitis, and UTIs can be treated with some of the antibiotics that the researchers found resistance to, including rifampicin, vancomycin, and ciprofloxacin.
SC65A.3 is the first Psychrobacter strain for which resistance to certain antibiotics – including trimethoprim, clindamycin, and metronidazole – was found. Those antibiotics are used to treat UTIs, infections of lungs, skin, or blood, and the reproductive system. SC65A.3’s resistance profile suggests that strains capable of surviving in cold environments could act as reservoirs of resistance genes which are specific DNA sequences that help them survive exposure to drugs.
Risky potential
Bacterial strains like the one examined here hold both a threat and a promise.If melting ice releases these microbes, these genes could spread to modern bacteria, adding to the global challenge of antibiotic resistance. On the other hand, they produce unique enzymes and antimicrobial compounds that could inspire new antibiotics, industrial enzymes, and other biotechnological innovations.
Dr Cristina Purcarea.
In the Psychrobacter SC65A.3 genome, the researchers found almost 600 genes with unknown functions, suggesting a yet untapped source for discovering novel biological mechanisms. Analysis of the genome also revealed 11 genes that are potentially able to kill or stop the growth of other bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
Such potential is becoming ever more important in a world where antibiotic resistance is a growing concern. Going back to ancient genomes and uncovering their potential highlights the important role the natural environment played in the spread and evolution of antibiotic resistance.These ancient bacteria are essential for science and medicine but careful handling and safety measures in the lab are essential to mitigate the risk of uncontrolled spread.
Dr Cristina Purcarea.
Publication:
What this discovery ultimately demonstrates is that antibiotic resistance is not some recent aberration caused solely by modern medicine, but a deep and ancient feature of microbial evolution. Bacteria have been competing with one another — and with fungi — for vast stretches of geological time, refining chemical weapons and defensive counter-measures long before humans ever synthesised penicillin. The Romanian cave ice simply preserves a snapshot of that ongoing evolutionary arms race.
For those committed to a literalist reading of Bronze Age mythology, however, the implications are awkward. Five thousand years of undisturbed cave ice, complete with viable, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, does not sit comfortably within a compressed post-Flood chronology. Nor does the idea of microorganisms apparently pre-equipped with resistance to compounds humans would not invent for millennia. Once again, the evidence from nature tells a coherent evolutionary story — one that requires neither mysticism nor magic, only time, selection, and the relentless logic of biology.
And ID creationists have nowhere to escape to other than a resort of Bible-literalist creationism and abandoning any pretence that ID is a genuine scientific alternative to 'Darwinism'.
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