New species of chlamydia discovered in the depths of the Arctic Ocean

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Successful first trial of chlamydia vaccine 0:34

(CNN) - When people hear the word chlamydia, they usually think of sexually transmitted infections.

And it is true that the specific bacteria that cause chlamydia generally depend on interactions with other organisms to survive.

Then, when a team of researchers discovered several new species related to chlamydia in the depths of the Arctic Ocean, in a place without oxygen and without an apparent host organism, they were surprised.

"Finding Chlamydiae in this environment was completely unexpected and of course raised the question of what the hell was he doing there?" Explained Jennah Dharamshi, a PhD student at Uppsala University in Sweden and lead author of a recent study.

The findings, published last week in Current Biology, could shed new light on how chlamydia came to infect humans and other animals.

They met several different cousins ​​of chlamydia between 0.1 and 9.4 meters below the sea floor, and discovered that the new species were closely related to the bacteria that cause infections in humans and other animals.

"Exceptionally abundant" bacteria

Although the authors did not find other host organisms on which the new chlamydial-related bacteria depended to survive, they said the species could obtain fuel from other microorganisms deep in the ocean sediment.

"Discovering that Chlamydia has relatives in marine sediments has given us new ideas on how chlamydial pathogens evolved," Dharamshi said.

A team of international researchers made the discovery by collecting samples during a visit to Loki Castle, a field of hydrothermal vents in the Arctic Ocean between Greenland, Iceland and Norway.

What makes this discovery particularly interesting, according to scientists, is the environment in which the bacteria were found.

At such a deep level below the surface of the ocean, there is almost no oxygen and extremely high pressure. But the researchers said they found that the new species of bacteria were "exceptionally abundant" in this part of the ocean; in some cases, they were even the dominant bacteria.

That could suggest that chlamydia and related bacteria play a much bigger role in marine ecology than previously known, the researchers commented.

For now, scientists don't know for sure what that role is. But this latest discovery indicates that there could be more of these bacteria deep in the ocean's surface. And that could lead to some answers.

Chlamydia