IN THE beginning there was antibiotic resistance. Bacteria have been carrying antibiotic-resistance genes for far longer than humans have had medical antibiotics. This fact – long suspected, and now proved – suggests that any antibiotic drug derived from a natural source is doomed to a short effective life.
Most antibiotics are developed from toxic molecules produced naturally by bacteria or fungi. This has led microbiologists to suspect that genes conferring resistance to these molecules must be a natural part of many microbes’ genomes. Indeed, resistance genes have been found in bacterial samples taken from ancient sources such as permafrost. However, as with…
