Scientists ponder the peat bog to fight TB

The environment of a peat bog is in a certain way similar to that of a human lung infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB). Both environments are acidic and low in oxygen, nutrients, and resources. As such, close bacterial relatives of M. tuberculosis inhabit these peat bogs, but they are not the only denizens of that ecosystem. Many types of fungi compete with mycobacteria for limited resources, and some of these fungi have ways to kill mycobacteria. Because M. tuberculosis is so closely related to the mycobacteria found in the bog, fungi that kill these relatives may be able to kill TB, too. A new paper in PLOS Biology (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002852 ) sampled 1,500 fungi species found in a peat bog in the Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Maine. All of them were exposed to M. tuberculosis , and the researchers isolated five that secreted a substance that killed the