Bacterial phylogeny structures soil resistomes across habitats

Functional metagenomic selections for resistance to 18 antibiotics in 18 different soils reveal that bacterial community composition is the primary determinant of soil antibiotic resistance gene content. Antibiotic resistance genes readily move between unrelated bacteria in hospital settings, prompting speculation that the remarkable diversity of resistance genes in soil contributes to an increasing flow of antibiotic resistance from environmental to pathogenic organisms. This study refutes this notion. Kevin Forsberg et al. performed functional metagenomic selections for resistance to 18 antibiotics from a series of agricultural and grassland soils and find that soil bacteria rarely possess the sequence…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 1143954
• WU
  Washington University in St. Louis
• UO
  University of Washington
• CD
  Children's Discovery Institute

  Award: MD-II-2011-117
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: DGE-1143954, DP2-DK-098089
• NI
  National Institute of General Medical Sciences

  Awards: GM: 007067, 007067