ReviewmBio2021
Why Do Antibiotics Exist?
Review in mBio, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- When context matters: community and environmental context to elicit natural products.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- A systematic identification of resistance determinants to antisense antibiotics suggests adaptation strategies dependent on the delivery peptide.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Programmable CRISPR-Cas diagnostic platforms for rapid detection of uropathogens and antimicrobial resistance.Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
- Machine learning identifies novel signatures of antifungal drug resistance in Saccharomycotina yeasts.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Genome Analysis Reveals Diversity and Functional Potential of Novel Janthinobacterium Species From Subarctic Soils.MicrobiologyOpen · 2026Article
- Next-generation anti-infective drugs in the post-antibiotic era: focusing on anti-virulence agents targeting the bacterial quorum sensing system.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Evidence for Trace Gas Metabolism and Widespread Antibiotic Synthesis in an Abiotically Driven, Antarctic Soil Ecosystem.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Article
- From Lab to Field: Context-Dependent Impacts ofBiomolecules · 2025Article
- Article
- Current Status of the Application of Antimicrobial Peptides and Their Conjugated Derivatives.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Context matters: assessing the impacts of genomic background and ecology on microbial biosynthetic gene cluster evolution.mSystems · 2025Review
- Antimicrobial activity of β-lactam antibiotics against pneumococcal isolates causing pneumococcal disease in adults immediately before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain (2019-2020).Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- Beyond traditional screening: Unveiling antibiotic potentials of actinomycetes in extreme environments.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Toxin-Antitoxin Systems Reflect Community Interactions Through Horizontal Gene Transfer.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Experts consensus on management of tooth luxation and avulsion.International journal of oral science · 2024Review
- A genetic screen identifies a role for oprF in Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm stimulation by subinhibitory antibiotics.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2024Article
- New Biocides Based onInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Unlocking the potential of bacterial endophytes from medicinal plants for drug discovery.Microbial biotechnology · 2024Review
- Eravacycline, the first four years: health outcomes and tolerability data for 19 hospitals in 5 U.S. regions from 2018 to 2022.Microbiology spectrum · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In the struggle with antibiotic resistance, we are losing. There is now a serious threat of moving into a postantibiotic world. High levels of resistance, in terms of both frequency and strength, have evolved against all clinically approved antibiotics worldwide. The usable life span of new clinically approved antibiotics is typically less than a decade before resistance reaches frequencies so high as to require only guarded usage. However, microbes have produced antibiotics for millennia without resistance becoming an existential issue. If resistance is the inevitable consequence of antibiotic usage, as has been the human experience, why has it not become an issue for microbes as well, especially since resistance genes are as prevalent in nature as the genes responsible for antibiotic production? Here, we ask how antibiotics can exist given the almost ubiquitous presence of resistance genes in the very microbes that have produced and used antibiotics since before humans walked the planet. We find that the context of both production and usage of antibiotics by microbes may be key to understanding how resistance is managed over time, with antibiotic synthesis and resistance existing in a paired relationship, much like a cipher and key, that impacts microbial community assembly. Finally, we put forward the cohesive, ecologically based "secret society" hypothesis to explain the longevity of antibiotics in nature.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.