Soil Bacteria THRIVE on Antibiotics
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- JordanRoth
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more from Green:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5872/100
Researchers from Harvard discovered that everyday soil from urban parks to farms to suburban lawns to pristine forest contain bacteria that not only are resistant to classes of antibiotics humans use every day, they can subsist on the antibiotics EXCLUSIVELY."Of 18 antibiotics tested, representing eight major classes of natural and synthetic origin, 13 to 17 supported the growth of clonal bacteria from each of 11 diverse soils.
"This phenomenon suggests that this unappreciated reservoir of antibiotic-resistance determinants can contribute to the increasing levels of multiple antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria."
I don't think anyone is ready to claim any causality. But having so many bacteria that are related to human pathogens, literally being soaked in antibiotic tainted agricultural and human runoff can not be good.
