Caribbean Beat — January/February 2019 (#155)

discover
Saved by
microbes
“
The microbial biodiversity of Caribbean
soils can be tens of thousands of times
greater than temperate soils,” says
Adesh Ramsubhag, a microbiologist
at the University of the West Indies
campus in St Augustine, Trinidad. The
implications are enormous, even if they don’t seem that way at
first. Many of these microbes have unique genes that result in
their production of “novel metabolic compounds.” And those
compounds have potentially major useful applications.
Such as reversing the worldwide attenuation of antibiotics.
Ramsubhag (and his graduate students) have uncovered one
compound which will do just that. It is now being patented, and
once that process is complete, he says, “This could be a gamechanger,
with the potential of saving many lives and bringing in
significant economic benefits to the country.” Other possibilities
include compounds which can clean up oil spills, improve crop
yields, and have other medical applications — all of which
Ramsubhag and his collaborators at UWI are working on.
These may seem like astounding revelations, and
they are. But the question arises: why are they only now
being revealed? The answer is that they’re not. That the
Caribbean’s biodiversity is greater than that of temperate climates
is well known. The Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture,
founded in 1921, was the institution that preceded
and eventually became the nucleus of UWI’s St Augustine
campus, and significant research was carried out, and discovwacomka
/ shutterstock.com
The remarkable biodiversity
of the Caribbean includes
tiny microbes in our soil and
water, many still unknown —
which offer compounds with
potential novel uses, from
medicine to agriculture. The
Trinidadian microbiologist Adesh
Ramsubhag is at the forefront
of this field of research, writes
Raymond Ramcharitar, and
his work suggests the pursuit
of science could be the
Caribbean’s economic salvation
108 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM