Antibiotics and heavy metals.
A postgrad student of mine (Dr Paul Bardos, now at Nottingham Trent
University, UK) looked at linkages between heavy metal resistance and
antibiotic resistance. Although there is evidence from hospital studies
that antibiotic resistance selection leads to increased heavy metal
tolerance we could find no evidence for the selection working in the
opposite direction, at least for heavy metal stress in soils.
Peter Harris,
University of Reading,
Department of Soil Science,
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6DW, UK.
AKA P.J.Harris at reading.ac.uk
