Reacción a "Researchers observe link between drought and antibiotic resistance in soil bacteria"

The issue is controversial and the conclusions are bold, given that:

• In arid soils, the microbiota is more abundant than in other soils and the metagenomic data are more diverse; consequently, greater diversity is to be expected in all types of genes, including those encoding activities related to substrate hydrolysis and signalling and communication molecules.
• It is not only human pathogenic bacteria that contribute to the abundance and diversity of antimicrobial resistance genes present in soil metagenomes. For example, in my group we have observed that in the genomes of soil fungi (such as Trichoderma: Steindorff et al. 2026. Nature Microbiology 11 (3): 815–831), whose cell wall is not a target for beta-lactam antibiotics, there are genes encoding beta-lactamases.

It is risky to claim that there is a direct link between bacterial antibiotic resistance and the metagenomes of drought-stricken soils. As the authors of the study discuss, further research is needed to establish a causal relationship.