New research suggests drought conditions may promote elevated antibiotic resistance in soil microbes, researchers reported yesterday in Nature Microbiology.
To determine how drought might affect soil microbial communities, which have been the source of many antibiotics used in clinical medicine, scientists from the California Institute of Technology began by compiling five metagenomic datasets from four previous studies in which drought was the only variable. The datasets included cropland and grassland in California, a forest in Switzerland, and a wetland in China.
Their hypothesis, based on previous studies of arid soil, was that reduced soil water content brought on by drought might increase the concentration of natural antibiotics in the soil, which would in turn “intensify the…