It’s Getting Hot in Here - Does Climate Change Select for Novel Pathogenic Microorganisms?

Earth is a rather cold place and free-living psychrotrophic microorganisms are genetically adapted to these conditions.

The ongoing climate crisis is leading to an increased number of days throughout the year with unusually high temperatures and has the potential to cause selective pressure on psychrotrophs to increase their viable growth temperature range.

This temperature adaptation carries the risk of creating novel species that can grow within the human body and become emerging pathogens.

This project will address the following specific questions:What are the intrinsic limits of heat adaptation for psychrotrophic microorganisms?

Can horizontal gene transfer overcome these limits?Could heat-adapted psychrotrophs evolve into novel pathogenic species?

To achieve this, 1,000 natural isolates (eukaryotic and prokaryotic) will be collected from environmental samples across Sweden (Year 1).

High-throughput screens coupled with in-depth analyses of selected isolates will be performed to determine the intrinsic limits of temperature adaptation in the collected isolates (Years 1-2). Horizontal gene transfer experiments will then be performed to overcome these intrinsic limits (Years 2-3).

Finally, a moth larvae model system will be used to test if the adapted isolates are pathogenic at 37°C (Years 3-4).

The importance of this research is to show how psychrotrophs can adapt to climate change and highlight potential emerging infectious diseases.