Antibiotics are meant to kill bacteria, so it might be disheartening to learn that some bacteria can literally eat antibiotics for breakfast. In fact, some species can thrive quite happily on nothing but antibiotics, even at high concentrations.
The rise of drug-resistant bacteria poses a significant threat to public health and many dangerous bugs seem to be developing resistance at an alarming rate. The headline-grabbing MRSA may be getting piggybacks from livestock to humans, while several strains of tuberculosis are virtually untreatable by standard drugs.
But a startling new study reveals just how widespread antibiotic resistance really is. Gautam Dantas from Harvard Medical School managed to culture antibiotic-eating bacteria from every one of 11 soil samples, taken from farmland and urban areas across the US. All eleven werepositively loaded with a diverse group of bacteria that were extremely resistant to a wide range of antibiotics at high concentrations.
Soil super-bugs
...
