Antibiotic resistance is prevalent in an isolated cave microbiome

Antibiotic resistance is a global challenge that impacts all pharmaceutically used antibiotics. The origin of the genes associated with this resistance is of significant importance to our understanding of the evolution and dissemination of antibiotic resistance in pathogens. A growing body of eviden...

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Published in:	PloS one 2012-04, Vol.7 (4), p.e34953
Main Authors:	Bhullar, Kirandeep, Waglechner, Nicholas, Pawlowski, Andrew, Koteva, Kalinka, Banks, Eric D, Johnston, Michael D, Barton, Hazel A, Wright, Gerard D
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Anthropogenic factors Anti-Bacterial Agents - immunology Antibiotic resistance Antibiotics Antimicrobial agents Aquifers Bacteria Bacteria - genetics Biochemistry Bioinformatics Biological Evolution Biology Computer science Daptomycin Deoxyribonucleic acid DNA Drug resistance Drug resistance in microorganisms Drug Resistance, Microbial - genetics Drug Resistance, Microbial - immunology E coli Escherichia coli Evolution Evolution (Biology) Gene sequencing Genes Genetic aspects Genome, Bacterial Genomes Glycosylation Human influences Humans Hypotheses Infectious diseases Kinases Macrolide antibiotics Medicine Metabolism Metagenome - genetics Metagenome - immunology Microbial drug resistance Microbiomes Microbiota Microorganisms Mutagenesis National parks Natural products New Mexico Pathogens Phosphorylation Phosphotransferases (Alcohol Group Acceptor) - chemistry Phosphotransferases (Alcohol Group Acceptor) - metabolism
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Summary:	Antibiotic resistance is a global challenge that impacts all pharmaceutically used antibiotics. The origin of the genes associated with this resistance is of significant importance to our understanding of the evolution and dissemination of antibiotic resistance in pathogens. A growing body of evidence implicates environmental organisms as reservoirs of these resistance genes; however, the role of anthropogenic use of antibiotics in the emergence of these genes is controversial. We report a screen of a sample of the culturable microbiome of Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico, in a region of the cave that has been isolated for over 4 million years. We report that, like surface microbes, these bacteria were highly resistant to antibiotics; some strains were resistant to 14 different commercially available antibiotics. Resistance was detected to a wide range of structurally different antibiotics including daptomycin, an antibiotic of last resort in the treatment of drug resistant Gram-positive pathogens. Enzyme-mediated mechanisms of resistance were also discovered for natural and semi-synthetic macrolide antibiotics via glycosylation and through a kinase-mediated phosphorylation mechanism. Sequencing of the genome of one of the resistant bacteria identified a macrolide kinase encoding gene and characterization of its product revealed it to be related to a known family of kinases circulating in modern drug resistant pathogens. The implications of this study are significant to our understanding of the prevalence of resistance, even in microbiomes isolated from human use of antibiotics. This supports a growing understanding that antibiotic resistance is natural, ancient, and hard wired in the microbial pangenome.
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203