Word: soiling
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...researchers found that some forms of bacteria found in soil are not killed by antibiotics, and can in some cases actually use them for nourishment...
While looking for bacteria living in the soil that could remove toxins from cellulose and other decaying plant matter, the researchers used antibiotics as an experimental control and discovered that many strains of bacteria were able to survive on antibiotics as their sole source of carbon...
...Lewis, a professor of biology at Northeastern, said that the underlying hypothesis of this paper suggests that the properties of soil bacteria that allow them to grow on antibiotics also allow them to resist antibiotics in more complex environments, like in an organism...
...study also found that many of these soil bacteria are closely related to human pathogens...
...super-resistant soil bacteria are exchanging genetic information with human pathogens, antibiotics might become counterproductive as a treatment because these bacteria might simply consume the antibiotics and use them to grow...