The human gut is a reservoir of antibiotic resistance. And the bacteria residing there could bequeath their gift of resistance to more harmful microbes under the right conditions, researchers report in the August 28 Science.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have found more resistance genes in indigenous gut bacteria than were known to exist. So far, the team has identified more than a hundred new genes conferring resistance to up to 13 antibiotics. All of these genes retain that role when inserted into E. coli bacteria, the authors say.
“This is the tip of the iceberg of what we will find when we start looking at all the bacteria in our gut that we mainly just ignore,” says infectious disease physician Vincent Young of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.