Advertisement

If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. (optional)

ACS values your privacy. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members.

ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCES TO C&EN

Biological Chemistry

World War I Dysentery Bacterium Was Antibiotic Resistant Before The Antibiotic Age

With an eye toward vaccine development, genome sequence provides insight into Shigella evolution

by Carmen Drahl
November 24, 2014 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 92, Issue 47

[+]Enlarge
Credit: The War Graves Photographic Project/CDC- Melissa Brower
Cable’s gravestone in Wimereux, France, and a sample of Shigella flexneri (orange) as it makes contact with a human host cell.
(left) Private Ernest Cable's gravestone in Wimereux Communal Cemetery, France. Cable died of dysentery early in World War I, caused by Shigella flexneri bacteria. (Right) A three-dimensional (3D) computer-generated image of a number of rod-shaped, drug-resistant Shigella bacteria. The artistic recreation was based upon scanning electron micrographic imagery.
Credit: The War Graves Photographic Project/CDC- Melissa Brower
Cable’s gravestone in Wimereux, France, and a sample of Shigella flexneri (orange) as it makes contact with a human host cell.

A new genome sequence of a dysentery-causing microbe from the World War I era has provided more evidence that antibiotic resistance existed before the age of “magic bullet” drugs (Lancet 2014, DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(14)61789-x). In 1915, British Army Private Ernest Cable fell victim to poor sanitation in the trenches in Belgium, dying of severe diarrhea caused by the microbe Shigella flexneri. A bacteriologist sent a sample of the germ to London for preservation. Now 100 years later, Nicholas R. Thomson of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and his colleagues decided to take a fresh look at Cable’s Shigella strain. With single-molecule real-time sequencing technology, Thomson’s team learned the 1915 microbe was resistant to both penicillin and erythromycin—long before either antibiotic was discovered and used therapeutically. The genome differs from a modern-day Shigella strain by only 2%, the researchers note, and those changes are largely associated with acquiring resistance to additional antimicrobials. Antibiotic resistance genes have been found in far more ancient samples than Cable’s, but knowledge of how his strain has changed over time is crucial information for researchers working toward a Shigella vaccine. Diarrheal disease still kills about 760,000 children annually because developing nations face sanitation issues much like those in the WWI trenches.

Article:

This article has been sent to the following recipient:

0 /1 FREE ARTICLES LEFT THIS MONTH Remaining
Chemistry matters. Join us to get the news you need.