Harmless bacteria from American soils carry the same antibiotic-resistance genes as many pathogenic microbes around the world, suggesting there is a secret arms trade running between the bacteria in our soils and those that ravage our bodies with disease. Such a trade has long been suspected, but Gautam Dantas from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has now found the clearest evidence for it. “The genes are 100 percent identical,” he said.
The research, published today (August 30) in Science, confirms that soil bacteria are an important reservoir of resistance genes, serving as an ancient stockpiles of shields and armor that disease-causing microbes can tap into. This may have contributed to the recent rise in multidrug-resistant microbes. “[The movement of] resistance between environment and clinic becomes a certainty rather that a hypothetical threat,” said Gerry Wright, a microbiologist at McMaster University, who was not involved in the ...
