Noah is known as one of the great biblical prophets. According to the book of Genesis, thanks to his insistence – and, why deny it, to his skills as a shipbuilder – all the species on the planet were saved, they spent forty days sailing in an ark. But this prophet started with an advantage: he only had to bring animals; The ecosystem that goes with them is never mentioned –tundras, savannas, steppes, mountains… -. Nothing, just beasts.
On the other hand, you, inside and even on the surface of your body, have about a hundred trillion bacteria . Some carry out their task alone, others need companions to develop their function –this is how the ecosystem is formed–, and together they form the well-known human microbiota. The microbiome, meanwhile, is a broader term that refers to the total population of these critters and their genetic material.
Knowledge of the human microbiome has exploded in the last decade, fueled by advances in big data and DNA testing. The most important part of these microorganisms inhabit our digestive system and have a direct connection with the brain. In fact, they not only influence our digestive system, but also our mood and the ability – or inability – to concentrate and act as an endocrine and immune system that is linked to dozens of diseases and disorders – from obesity to diabetes to certain types of cancer, sclerosis, disorders such as autism spectrum, asthma and the vast majority of inflammatory diseases. Bottom line: the microbiota contains much more versatile metabolic genes than those found in the human genome. But, according to the World Economic Forum, we barely know 1% of them in depth, which means that we have peeked through the lock and now we have to open the door.
“Industrialization, modernity, has allowed us to control diseases that killed our ancestors, but we also observe that we are not eliminating diseases, we are replacing them, and they all have a common factor: inflammation, which is a response of the immune system. All of them controllable by medicine, but they have no cure. How can we avoid having to change one for the other? The goal is to respect the immune system so that it develops normally. Due to industrialized food, climate change and urban life – with all the consequences of sedentary lifestyle – we are giving this system of bacteria a bad education. And the key is to preserve the biodiversity of the microbiota ”, explains the doctor of Venezuelan origin María Gloria Domínguez-Bello, from Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA). She is one of those responsible for the Microbiota Vault –or microbiota vault–.
In the same way that the famous Seed Vault – or seed vault -, an armored enclosure on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, protects the enormous variety of seeds of 118 countries from possible natural disasters and wars, the Microbiota Vault project seeks to protect the biodiversity of our microbiota for future studies.
“What we have observed,” explains Domínguez-Bello from New York, “is that we are losing diversity as people industrialize. There are many parallels to the Seed Vault. This is based on the fact that monoculture has destroyed a great diversity of plants and agriculture has spread so much that it has modified the landscape on a planetary level, with all its consequences. The Seed Vault was created to preserve natural diversity in the belief that it will be necessary in the future. The biodiversity of our microbiome, on the other hand, is also altered by human activity. And biodiversity gives us more tools to adapt to change ”, he highlights.
The word ‘biodiversity’ is constantly repeated, but, if we are all human, if our microbiome comes almost entirely from our mother and there is so much talk about monocultures and industrialized food … how much can the microbiome differ between human beings? Much more than we think. In fact, according to experts, much more than recommended. Here are some concrete tests. A study, carried out in hospitals in Amsterdam (Netherlands) with 1032 newborns, discovered notable differences in the intestinal flora of children born by natural birth and those who came to the world by cesarean section. The former had a greater variety of beneficial bacteria than the latter. And this just to be born. Imagine the difference that can be made at ten years of life.
“We are talking about millions of different cells,” explains Manuel Fankhauser, one of the scientific directors of the Microbiota Vault project and head of the Seerave Foundation, the foundation that will fund their construction. And all these cells produce millions of metabolites. Systems biology is essentially a complex problem. We are only now beginning to see studies that help us understand how specific bacteria act and their effect on different diseases. But this is only the beginning and we cannot wait four more years until we have all the knowledge. We must start preserving the microbiome now , ”says Fankhauser.
A scientific study published in Nature analyzed the differences between the microbiome of inhabitants of the United States, Malawi and tribes of Venezuela. “The data indicated that, compared to an isolated Yanomani population in Venezuela, in Colorado – one of the healthiest US territories – almost half of the biodiversity has been lost . And what we still do not know is what does what has been lost ”, indicates Domínguez-Bello.
We know that people who live in forests and savannas, who have had few of the benefits of modern medicine, have a much more diverse microbiota than industrialized countries. “These comparisons unequivocally suggest that, as the world modernized, we lost much of our microbial heritage,” adds Domínguez-Bello. Our idea is that each country creates its own collection. We, through the Microbiota Vault, what we would give is the protocol so that all samples are conserved in the same way ”.
The microbiota vault will function – it is estimated that from 2025 – in a similar way to the Svalbard seed bank. The bank will own the building, but the country that deposits the microbiota will retain ownership of the content. In this way, it is hoped to achieve something similar to what happened with the Svalbard site, which constitutes insurance for the 1750 seed banks in the world. In fact, only once in history has a country claimed its seeds. It was Syria, due to the civil war that has broken the country and caused much of its agricultural diversity to be lost. But there are more reasons to create a microbiota vault.
“When I learned about the seed vault in 2017, I knew that there was a possible alternative to the constant threats that my collection of samples suffered,” explains Domínguez-Bello. Political instability is compounded by economic and environmental instability: infrastructure problems, electricity, floods, etc. I first took my collection of dozens of microbiota samples to Puerto Rico [this expert began her career in Venezuela], which has an annual hurricane season, so you also had to prepare. Fortunately, the collection did not suffer any damage. In 2012 I moved to New York, and a month after I did, Hurricane Sandy hit and our lab was closed for eleven months. At that time the collection was almost completely lost. We had to get into a flooded building, go up ten floors by stairs, go down with the samples and take them very carefully to another building, ”he recalls.
The samples that Domínguez-Bello talks about are obtained through intestinal fluid, feces or mucosal biopsy. And there are two main forms of preservation: lyophilization – basically, removing the water from them – and keeping the sample alive by cryogenization, that is, freezing them with liquid nitrogen.
According to the feasibility study, commissioned by the Seerave Foundation from independent scientists, both forms of conservation have their advantages and disadvantages. Since the information obtained from the samples will be available to scientists around the world, the collection and conservation protocols must be standardized. Specimens should be frozen as soon as possible after collection, as the more time that passes, the more difficult is their reanimation after the freezing process. This option constitutes the storage method with the best prospects, but, at the same time, it requires a reliable electrical grid and very stable conditions – political, scientific, environmental, etc. -. For its part, lyophilization is attractive because it allows storage at temperatures that occur naturally in the Arctic, which makes them easy to preserve and store, but complex in the initial stage of processing.
For all this, the feasibility study recommends creating two vaults. One of them in Switzerland, where the cryogenized samples would be kept, and the other in Svalbard itself, with the freeze-dried specimens. Both buildings, according to the feasibility study, will be built to face different types of cataclysms, they will have to contemplate future adaptations or extensions and they have to be, as far as possible, autonomous in energy terms and be integrated into the landscape. Finally, “and perhaps most importantly,” the study explains, “the initiative should serve to catalyze research on the diversity and relevance for the health of the microbiota. Therefore, it is essential to arrive at a convincing model for the interaction of the vault and the investigation ” . In other words, the Microbiota Vault aspires to become not only a container, but also a generator of ideas available to scientists around the world.
“Each collection must be accompanied by its metadata – adds Domínguez-Bello – something that should be standard. That is, where the sample was obtained, age, sex, types of bacteria found, etc. It is a mine of global information. Until now, all the information was obtained from people affected by different ailments, and mainly in the United States, Japan and Europe. We lack data from those communities with the greatest diversity. The diversity of bacteria in our body is greater than that found in animals and plants. And it is complicated because there are bacteria that cannot be isolated, they go in a community. We are a Noah’s ark, but we not only carry the animals, but also their ecosystem. It is urgent to start making local collections right away because some towns are running out of people ”.
And, as if that were not enough, those responsible for the initiative face another problem, one that will come in the future, but with the potential to turn everything upside down. The Seerave team points out that all the information obtained will be freely accessible. But not only for universities and scientists, also for laboratories and pharmaceutical companies.
“The big obstacles will actually be legal and patent-related,” explains Fankhauser from Switzerland. We must make it very clear that those who use, for example, the microbiota of a certain population to develop a cure for a disease will have to fulfill a commitment to give back to those populations. And that commitment has to be clear in the ethical and legal aspects ”, he adds.
The challenge is enormous, but its impact has the potential to revolutionize our lives if, as Domínguez-Bello points out, we only know in depth 1% of the function of the bacteria that live with us. We are a planet, with dozens of ecosystems and a more diverse fauna than on Earth. And, to study it, the first thing is to preserve it.
