Antibiotic resistance is ancient: implications for drug discovery

An unfailing observation over the past 70 years is that resistance to all antibiotics emerges eventually after use in the clinic. Where does this resistance come from? Recent work has shown that antibiotic resistance genes are common in metagenomes of ancient sediments. This prevalence of resistance...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTrends in microbiology (Regular ed.) Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 157 - 159
Main Authors Wright, Gerard D, Poinar, Hendrik
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2012
Subjects
aminoglycoside
ancient DNA
Animals
Anti-Bacterial Agents - pharmacology
antibiotic
antibiotic resistance
antibiotics
Bacteria - drug effects
Bacteria - genetics
beta-lactamase
chemical ecology
Drug Discovery - trends
Drug Resistance, Bacterial
drugs
Ecosystem
genes
Humans
Internal Medicine
Metagenome
metagenomics
sediments
tetracycline
vancomycin
antibiotic
aminoglycoside
vancomycin
ancient DNA
beta-lactamase
tetracycline
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Summary:An unfailing observation over the past 70 years is that resistance to all antibiotics emerges eventually after use in the clinic. Where does this resistance come from? Recent work has shown that antibiotic resistance genes are common in metagenomes of ancient sediments. This prevalence of resistance, well before the use of antibiotics, denotes the importance of taking microbial chemical ecology and deep metagenomic profiling into account in the development and use of antibiotics.
Bibliography:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2012.01.002
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0966-842X
1878-4380
DOI:10.1016/j.tim.2012.01.002