A brown bear in Sweden Ondrej Prosicky/Getty Images
The mouth bacteria of wild bears in Sweden hold a historical record of human antibiotic use and the rise of antibiotic resistance.
Antibiotics are used widely in medicine and agriculture, and can leak into the environment via untreated waste water. Wild animals can then encounter contaminated water, soil or food sources, and play a role in the evolution of antibiotic resistance.
To track changes in antibiotic resistance over time, , then at Uppsala University in Sweden, and her colleagues sequenced the oral microbiomes of Swedish brown bears, using museum…
