The secret of the purest water of Lake Baikal: bacteria

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the central part of the lake, water can be drunk without boiling.

Scientists of the Irkutsk Limnological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have solved the mystery of the special purity of the water of Lake Baikal. It turns out that the natural cleaners of the reservoir are bacteriophage microorganisms - viruses that destroy pathogenic bacteria.

According to "MK" Doctor of Biological Sciences, Chief Researcher of the Institute Valentin Dryukker, the hypothesis that natural enemies of bacteria, such as E. coli or Staphylococcus aureus, live in Lake Baikal, has existed for a long time. However, scientists did not have the opportunity to prove this in the absence of transmission electron microscopes, which give an increase of 600 thousand times (ordinary light gives an increase of only 2-3 thousand times). Having received powerful instruments, they were able to discern the smallest creatures in the water of Lake Baikal, several nanometers in size (1 nanometer is equal to 10 to minus 9 degrees of a meter).

Irkutsk microbiologists have discovered 9 out of 10 known to science, 4 more new species. Among them there are microorganisms that stand out in especially large sizes (dozens of times larger than ordinary bacteriophages), as well as in forms. For example, it turned out that in Baikal there are bacteriophages in the form of a whirligig and even a hammer. Each of these microorganisms is a specific killer for certain bacteria. Bacteriophages invade a specific bacterium, for example, E. coli, multiply, and it dies. The most active struggle is taking place in the coastal zone of the lake, where pathogenic flora lives, fed by household wastewater. In the central part of Lake Baikal, the water is so well purified by bacteriophages that you can drink it without boiling it.

On almost all of the found bacteriophages, scientists have started "personal files" with a description of the morphological and genetic properties. It is assumed that in the future, bacteriophages will be able to successfully replace antibiotics familiar to everyone. Their advantage is that they do not hit all the flora of the body at once, but in some of its species.