Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Your closest biodiversity hotspot could be found no further than the bathroom. According to new research in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, showerheads and toothbrushes are home to a diverse community of viruses – most of which are currently unknown to science.
“The number of viruses that we found is absolutely wild,” says Erica M. Hartmann of Northwestern University in the US, who led the study.
“We found many viruses that we know very little about and many others that we have never seen before. It’s amazing how much untapped biodiversity is all around us. And you don’t even have to go far to find it; it’s right under our noses.”
The viruses in question are bacteriophage, or simply “phage”, which infect and replicate inside bacteria and thankfully don’t present any harm to humans. Instead, scientists think they may hold the key to new treatments for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.
The study builds off of previous research by the same group, which analysed the bacterial communities living in biofilms on toothbrushes and in showerheads around the US.
Hartmann and her colleagues used metagenomics, which involves amplifying and sequencing all the genetic material in an environmental sample, to reveal the presence of more than 600 types of viruses in the same samples.
“We saw basically no overlap in virus types between showerheads and toothbrushes,” Hartmann says.
“We also saw very little overlap between any 2 samples at all. Each showerhead and each toothbrush is like its own little island. It just underscores the incredible diversity of viruses out there.”
The researchers found more mycobacteriophage than any other kind of phage. These infect mycobacteria, a genus of more than 190 species of bacteria which includes the pathogens that cause tuberculosis, leprosy, and chronic lung infections.
Hartmann thinks that someday researchers could harness mycobacteriophage to treat these infections and others.
“We could envision taking these mycobacteriophage and using them as a way to clean pathogens out of your plumbing system,” she says.
“We want to look at all the functions these viruses might have and figure out how we can use them.”
