ArticlePloS one2012
Antibiotic resistance is prevalent in an isolated cave microbiome.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 259 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
259 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Antarctic soil microbiomes encode structurally conserved and phylogenetically diverse beta-lactamases.iMetaOmics · 2026Article
- The Role of Migratory Birds in the Dissemination of Antimicrobial Resistance: A One Health Perspective.Veterinary sciences · 2026Article
- Intergeneric conjugative transfer of plasmid-associated antibiotic resistance genes from environmental Aeromonas spp. to gram-negative recipient strains.Molecular biology reports · 2026Article
- Soil Resistomes in a Tropical Watershed are Indirectly Structured by Bacterial Community Interactions with Soil Properties.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Ngt-1: A glycosyltransferase that confers resistance to three distinct antibiotic classes.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2026Article
- ASP-COMPLEX: redefining antimicrobial stewardship to improve outcomes in high-risk patients with severe infections.Revista espanola de quimioterapia : publicacion oficial de la Sociedad Espanola de Quimioterapia · 2026Review
- Paleopathology Meets Public Health: Deep-Time Syndemics and the Ecology of Emerging Infections.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Article
- Envelope destabilization by AcrABCommunications biology · 2026Article
- Silent Threat Evolution: Critically Important Carbapenem and Colistin Resistance Genes in the Natural Aquatic Environment.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- The expansion of culturable opportunistic pathogens and antibiotic resistance in mouse gut following antibiotic exposure.Microbiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Minding the knowledge-action gap: Results from a mixed-methods study of antimicrobial use among dairy farmers in central Uganda.PloS one · 2026Article
- Microbial Chemical Diversity and Cytotoxic Potential From Brazilian Ferruginous Caves: A Pioneering Metabolomic Survey.Chemistry & biodiversity · 2026Article
- "Multidrug-Resistant Achromobacter isolated from soil: an emerging pathogen".BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Reconstruction of 1,979 prokaryotic metagenome-assembled genomes from 37 global cave environments.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Uncovering the gut microbiome and antibiotic resistome of mammals on the Tibetan Plateau.Science China. Life sciences · 2025Article
- Geographics and bacterial networks differently shape the acquired and latent global sewage resistomes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The effect of WWTP products amendments on Phaseolus vulgaris rhizosphere and its ability to inactivate clarithromycin.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Diversity of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements of Sof Umer Cave microbiomes, Ethiopia.BMC genomic data · 2025Article
199 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
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.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.