Environmental dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes and correlation to anthropogenic contamination with antibiotics

摘要

The first antibiotic compound, penicillin, was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming as a product of the fungus Penicillium notatum, and became available for therapeutic use in the 1940s. The therapeutic usage of penicillin was however pre-empted by another class of antibiotics, the sulphonamides, which were introduced in 1937 (1). These new therapeutical agents brought about a paradigm shift in the treatment of bacterial diseases. Not only did deadly infectious diseases become treatable, but the availability of antibiotics also opened up possibilities for new kinds of medical interventions including major surgical interventions and organ transplants (2). For some decades after their introduction, antibiotics seemed to have solved the problem of bacterial infectious diseases forever (3).