Biodegradation of antibiotics: The new resistance determinants – part I

History shows that the discovery of, and the resistance to, antibiotics go hand in hand. While knowledge of resistance mechanisms, their impact and distribution is vast, over the years, the topic of antibiotic degradation has often been overlooked and regarded as being discrete from the research on resistance. As a result, understanding of the degradation of antibiotics and the impact of antibiotic degraders on the environment and human health are, for most classes, neither thoroughly documented nor understood. Current information on the biodegradation of antibiotics is described in two review articles. This first part focuses on sulfonamides, trimethoprim, aminoglycosides, amphenicols and tetracyclines. Detailed metabolic and molecular aspects as well as the role of the degraders in natural microbial communities are discussed. An integrated analysis of the accumulated data indicates that appreciation of the interplay between resistance and degradation is quite fragmented, and closing this gap will require novel experimental approaches.