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Bacteria Subsisting on Antibiotics

Gautam Dantas, Morten O. A. Sommer, Rantimi D. Oluwasegun, and George M. Church http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/email.htmlAuthors Info & Affiliations

Science

4 Apr 2008

Vol 320, Issue 5872

pp. 100-103

DOI: 10.1126/science.1155157

Abstract

Antibiotics are a crucial line of defense against bacterial infections. Nevertheless, several antibiotics are natural products of microorganisms that have as yet poorly appreciated ecological roles in the wider environment. We isolated hundreds of soil bacteria with the capacity to grow on antibiotics as a sole carbon source. 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. Bacteria subsisting on antibiotics are surprisingly phylogenetically diverse, and many are closely related to human pathogens. Furthermore, each antibiotic-consuming isolate was resistant to multiple antibiotics at clinically relevant concentrations. This phenomenon suggests that this unappreciated reservoir of antibiotic-resistance determinants can contribute to the increasing levels of multiple antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria.

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We acknowledge the expert assistance of N. Soares and H. Henderson for microbial culturing; P. Girguis and H. White for ARB analysis; D. Bang for HPLC; W. Haas for mass spectrometry; D. Ellison and W. Curtis for sample collection; J.-H. Lee, R. Kolter, and J. Shendure for general discussion; J. Aach for helpful discussions regarding the manuscript; and the U.S. Department of Energy GtL Program, the Harvard Biophysics Program, The Hartmann Foundation, and Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab for funding. 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences were deposited in GenBank with accession numbers EU515334 to EU515623.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Science

Volume 320 | Issue 5872
4 April 2008

Copyright

American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Submission history

Received: 11 January 2008

Accepted: 3 March 2008

Published in print: 4 April 2008

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Notes

Supporting Online Material

www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5872/100/DC1

Materials and Methods

Figs. S1 to S3

Tables S1 to S3

References

Authors

Affiliations

Gautam Dantas^*

Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

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Morten O. A. Sommer^*

Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Program of Biophysics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

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Rantimi D. Oluwasegun

Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

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George M. Church^† http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/email.html

Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

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Notes

†

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/email.html

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Bacteria Subsisting on Antibiotics.Science320,100-103(2008).DOI:10.1126/science.1155157

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