We take more and more mercury through fish. There are those who want to solve it with “design” probiotics

The presence of mercury in fish (or in some fish) is A growing problem in the field of food security. Prolonged exposure to this pollutant is an important risk to people’s health, a risk that could go worse in the coming years.

Detox, but real. A team of researchers has manipulated a bacterium present in the digestive system of humans to do it Able to eliminate methylmercury present in fish. In a study with mice, the mechanism allowed this toxin to reach other organs of the animal, such as brain or liver.

An increasing problem. He methylmercury It is a cation, a molecule with a positive charge, which gives its name to a series of compounds that integrate this form of mercury. Methylmercurio is also the most common way in which we can find organic mercury naturally.

Mercury in its different forms is a pollutant present not only in some pesticides but also in Gas emissions to the atmosphere. These mercury residues end up arriving at the sea and the trophic chain, a process called “biomagnification.” This heavy metal tends to accumulate more in larger fish and in those closest to the cusp of the “food pyramid.” And from there, to our kitchens.

Design bacteria. The work It started from a known bacterium and abundant in our digestive system, Thetaiotaomicron bacteroids. It inserted coding DNA enzymes from another known bacterium present in the soil, a bacterium with a determining feature, its resistance to mercury.

Probiotics The team first checked In vitro that these bacteria had managed to become resistant to methylmercury, and then administer bacteria to mice. These soon were integrated into the digestive system of mammals, which was administered orally to study the impact.

The team first analyzed the effect of The administration of a large amount of this compound. They found that in the mice to whom the new bacterium had been administered, the mercury began to disappear shortly after its administration, a purification process that lasted for about four days.

In the long term. The team also studied the effects of moderate but prolonged mercury consumption in time. The team altered the mice diet and made it rich in red tuna, one of the fish with higher heavy metal concentrations. Not only did they verify that the methylmercury continued to disappear from the digestive systems of the mice, they also verified that it did not permeate the body of these.

The team studied the effect on pregnant mice, checking that methylmercury levels were kept low in maternal and fetal tissues, including less toxicity in the fetus’s brain. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Cell Host & Microbe.

A problem that will go worse before better. The study opens the way to the use of “design” probiotics that could help us avoid the worst consequences of mercury pollution. This method does not attack the root problem but, as their own creators explain, it can help us address a problem without a short -term solution.

“Despite global efforts to reduce mercury emissions and their accumulation in fish, metercurio levels are not expected stood out in a press release Amina Schartup, co -author of the study.

In Xataka | Some researchers were following a tuna. Suddenly they discovered that I was on a road on the way to Birmingham

Image | Ryutaro Tsukata