These bacteria have no scientific name nor, in all likelihood, have they ever been studied before. Which is not unusual. According to Mallory, only 7 percent of the world's bacterial species have been studied and identified. Even so, bacteria have been crucial to modern medicine's development. Seventy percent of the known antibiotics were developed from experiments on bacteria of the Streptomyces genus, a common type of soil bacteria.
Antibiotics are medicine's primary weapon against bacterial infections.
Thousands of other medicines derived from bacteria could still be discovered. The bacteria Mallory has found could be one of those medicines. The compounds these tube bacteria produce might kill cancer cells without harming healthy normal cells in the human body. That Mallory is even studying cave bacteria is an accident. After earning a doctorate in ecology with an emphasis in microbiology in 1980, Mallory wanted to study bacteria deep beneath the soil.