Soil microbes are reservoir for antibiotic resistance
Bacteria that live in dirt are surprisingly resistant to antibiotics, even those drugs they presumably have never encountered before, according to new research.
The majority of medical antibiotics originally came from soil bacteria, which produce chemicals to kill off other microbial species that compete for the same resources. To one-up the competition, many of these bacteria have evolved ways to detoxify antibiotics that neighboring species secrete.
Few of these soil bacteria are species that make people sick. However, notes Gerald Wright of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, scientists had never examined the extent of antibiotic resistance in soil bacteria. Such knowledge might give researchers clues to how infection-causing microbes develop antibiotic resistance.