Jessica Hamzelou notes in NewScientist (5 May 2018) that some bacteria are now munching on penicillin:
Gautam Dantas at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues discovered [the consumption of penicillin by bacteria] by accident 10 years ago. They were growing soil bacteria in the presence of penicillin, expecting that it would stop them from growing.
“But we saw exceptional growth on antibiotics,” says Dantas. His team found that some strains were around 50 times above the threshold at which bacteria are normally classed as antibiotic-resistant, and that they were feeding on the penicillin.
Now, Dantas and his colleagues have figured out how these bacteria do it, by focusing on the genes that became active in four strains. Deleting these genes and observing the effects revealed that the bacteria are able to thrive on penicillin using a cocktail of enzymes: proteins that catalyse chemical reactions.
And they know how. It seems Nature is just one big toolbox, at least for bacteria, what with the swapping of genes (“horizontal gene transfer”). Jessica notes that the researchers are having some thoughts towards using this discovery for removing waste antibiotics from our water supply.
I wonder what unintended consequence that might have.
