6 The large reservoir of antibiotic resistant bacteria in raw and treated water supplies is a matter of public health concern. Currently, the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring Systems, a collaborative effort of the Centers for Disease Control, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Food and Drug Administration, does not monitor antimicrobial resistance in surface waters. Given ...

Inactivation and microbial regrowth of penicillin-, ampicillin-, cefalexin-, tetracycline-, chloramphenicol-, and rifampicin-resistant bacteria were studied to explore risks associated with selection and regrowth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria after PAA disinfection. The results showed that after exposure to 20 mg/L PAA for 10 min, inactivation of ampicillin-resistant bacteria reached 2.3-log...

By challenging E. coli with sublethal norfloxacin for 10 days, Henry Lee and James Collins suggests the bacterial altruism leads to the population-wide resistance. By detailedly analyzing experiment data, we suggest that bacterial cooperation leads to population-wide resistance under norfloxacin pressure and simultaneously propose the bacteria shield is the possible feedback mechanism of less r...

Arsenic is commonly present in the natural environment and is also used as a feed additive for animal production. Poultry is a major reservoir for Campylobacter jejuni, a major food-borne human pathogen causing gastroenteritis. It has been shown that Campylobacter isolates from poultry are highly resistant to arsenic compounds, but the molecular mechanisms responsible for the resistance have no...

The Atacama Desert hosts diverse ecosystems including salt flats and shallow Andean lakes. Several heavy metals are found in the Atacama Desert, and microorganisms growing in this environment show varying levels of resistance/tolerance to copper, tellurium, and arsenic, among others. Herein, we report the genome sequence and comparative genomic analysis of a new Exiguobacterium strain, sp. SH31...

Rosie Redfi eld is Professor of Zoology at the University of British Columbia, where she has been since 1990. Her research investigates the evolution and molecular biology of natural transformation in bacteria (her cocktail-party summary is “Do bacteria have sex?”). She blogs about her research at RRResearch. blogspot.com, where a recent blog post received a lot of attention from both scientist...

Antibiotic resistance is a major concern, yet it is unclear what causes the relatively high densities of resistant bacteria in the anthropogenically impacted environment. There are various possible scenarios (hypotheses): (A) Input of resistant bacteria from wastewater and agricultural sources is significant, but they do not grow in the environment; (B) Input of resistant bacteria is negligible...

Epidemiologic studies have shown an association between elevated arsenic levels in drinking water and an increased risk of atherosclerosis and vascular diseases. The studies presented here were performed to evaluate the atherogenic potential of arsenic using a well-established and controlled animal model of human atherosclerosis, mice deficient in apolipoprotein E (ApoE), and in vitro systems i...