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Reservoirs of resistance: To understand why antibiotics fail, geneticists chase the 'resistome'

Nature Medicine volume 22, pages 1069–1071 (2016)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 06 January 2017

A Correction to this article was published on 08 November 2016

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Luckily for the patient, his urinary tract infection had responded well to a commonly prescribed combination antibiotic therapy called co-trimoxazole, and he had already been discharged from the hospital. But Kreiswirth feared a looming crisis. The resistance genes had appeared in the plasmids of the E. coli, and Gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli can transfer these plasmids to other pathogenic members of their Enterobacteriaceae family, such as Klebsiella and Pseudomonas. “Not only do you have to worry about patients getting sick from these organisms, now there's also the concern of these resistance genes getting passed around,” Kreiswirth says.

Kreiswirth's worry is amplified by the fact that no new class of antibiotics has reached the market in more than 30 years. Scientists are studying the genes that make bacteria impervious to medicines, but developing new drugs is only part of the challenge of combatting infectious superbugs. The other half of the equation involves the detection and prevention of these nefarious strains. Collecting data about the prevalence of mutations in bacteria that enable them to evade drugs will help scientists to understand how these microbes develop such resistance, and hospitals and public-health officials to track the pattern of their spread. Academic labs are working on cataloging these antibiotic-resistance genes in what is collectively described for each organism as its 'resistome'. And at least one company is now making a test that can detect resistance genes present in clinical samples taken from sick patients.

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Change history

  • 20 October 2016

    In the October 2016 issue, the piece “Reservoirs of resistance: To understand why antibiotics fail, geneticists chase the 'resistome'” (Nat. Med. 22, 1069–1071, 2016) neglected to include the full name and affiliation of Evan Jones, one of the sources quoted in the piece. Evan Jones serves as the CEO of OpGen. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of this article.

  • 09 November 2016

    In the October 2016 issue, the piece “Reservoirs of resistance: To understand why antibiotics fail, geneticists chase the 'resistome'” (Nat. Med. 22, 1069–1071, 2016) incorrectly stated that PCR sequencing is a form of short-read sequencing. The article also incorrectly attributed a quote to Justin O'Grady instead of to Gautam Dantas. These errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of this article.

  • 08 November 2016

    In the October 2016 issue, the piece “Reservoirs of resistance: To understand why antibiotics fail, geneticists chase the 'resistome'” (Nat. Med. 22, 1069–1071, 2016) neglected to include the full name and affiliation of Evan Jones, one of the sources quoted in the piece. Evan Jones serves as the CEO of OpGen.

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  1. Shraddha Chakradhar is Nature Medicine's Associate News Editor, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.,

    Shraddha Chakradhar

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Chakradhar, S. Reservoirs of resistance: To understand why antibiotics fail, geneticists chase the 'resistome'. Nat Med 22, 1069–1071 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1016-1069

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