The development of new antibiotics is a crucial area of modern medicine and pharmacology, but we must recognize that the problem of antibiotic resistance will never be solved. Microorganisms will more or less quickly develop defense mechanisms against antibiotics or acquire ready-made resistance genes from their fellow bacteria through horizontal transfer. After all, one of the most important sources of antibiotic resistance is the enormous diversity of nonpathogenic bacteria in the environment. They have numerous ways to protect their vital systems, including those that serve as targets for antibiotics. And in response to each new antibiotic, they will quickly develop resistance recipes. Therefore, it is vital to seek alternative methods of fighting infections.

Further evidence that drug resistance was inherent in bacteria even before the advent of antibiotics was presented in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Scientists from the Sanger Institute and the Public Health Service of the United Kingdom assembled the genome of the oldest publicly available strain of Vibrio cholerae (NCTC 30), isolated in 1916 from the feces of a British soldier. It turned out that the bacterium contained genes for β-lactamase, an enzyme that destroys one of the structural components of penicillin, even though these antibiotics had not yet been discovered at the time. Penicillins are naturally occurring antibiotics produced by microscopic fungi, which the cholera pathogen could easily have encountered.

* Dorman MJ, Kane L, Domman D et al. The history, genome and biology of NCTC 30: a non-pandemic Vibrio cholerae isolate from World War One // Proc. R. Soc. B, 2019, 286: 20182025. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2025