The museum stores 6,000 dangerous bacteria

The Museum of Microbiological Varieties (NCTC) contains strains of bacteria representing more than 900 species that can infect, making people sick and dead .

Of the nearly 800 strain museums in 78 countries, the NCTC is managed by the British Public Health Agency of the few museums specialized in storing clinically significant bacteria, which are species that cause disease in humans. The first bacterial sample sent to the NCTC was taken from a soldier named Ernest Cable, who served in the British army during World War I. Cable died on March 13, 1515, due to Shigella flexneri, the bacterium that caused the disease. dysentery. Lt. William Broughton-Alcock, military bacteriologist, took S. flexneri from Cable corpse, placed the bacterium in agar and kept in wax-covered box before naming it NCTC 1.

A tube containing bacteria in NCTC. (Photo: NYT).

The museum provides standard samples of known bacterial strains to many clinical microbiologists around the world. They study how bacteria evolve, check safety rules for infectious diseases, develop vaccines, anticancer drugs and metabolic disorder therapies, and learn about antibiotic resistance. For example, the bacteria that caused the death of Cable soldiers were revived from a freeze-dried form by Kate Baker, a microbiologist at the University of Liverpool, and her colleagues in an attempt to understand how S. flexneri advances. chemistry over the past decade. Dysentery still kills about 164,000 people every year, mostly children.

The team sequenced the genome of NCTC 1, then compared it with other strains isolated in 1954, 1984 and 2002. Only 2% of this bacterial genome changed in the last century, but the changes It is associated with higher virulence, immunity to evasion and stronger antibiotic resistance. When researchers like Dr. Baker discover a new strain or species, they can deposit it in NCTC 1.

The NCTC Museum opened its first time in London in 1920 at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. The first 200 bacterial samples, including specimens taken from Cable soldiers, were deposited by Frederick William Andrewes, a pathologist specializing in dysentery during World War INCTC, sending 2,000 free strains of bacteria to various institutions in The next year. The transferred bacteria were still alive, preserved in agar made from egg yolks and placed in wax-covered boxes.

NCTC contains many bacteria that help create many medical breakthroughs. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, deposited 16 bacteria strains at the museum from 1982 to 1948. Fleming even took samples of Haemophilus influenzae, NCTC 4842, from his nose.

In 2019, the museum sent 3,083 tubes of bacteria to 63 countries. The most common bacteria are Clostridium (the leading cause of diarrhea), E. coli (360 strains, some dangerous, others harmless), Staphylococcus (cause mild to death infectious diseases) , Mycobacteriaceae (causing tuberculosis and leprosy) and Salmonella (from contaminated food). They are shipped to distribution centers on the outskirts of London under strict safety regulations. Most bacteria have a biosecurity level at level 2 or 3, meaning they can cause serious or fatal illnesses but with medication. The most dangerous level is level 4 that includes only viruses.

New specimens were cultured in agar agar to ensure they were alive and free of contamination, then deactivated in a sugar-rich preservative frozen solution, freeze-dried to -33 degrees Celsius during 3 - 4 hours, then put into glass tubes blocked with sterile cotton and stored at 4 degrees C. Not all specimens survive long storage periods. Each specimen comes with a description of the origin, identity and important characteristics in the search database.