We know antibiotics as weapons against bacteria...however, not only there are strains that are resistant to these small molecules but also there are ones capable of growing on them as the sole carbon source (which sort of defeats the purpose). However, I should note that I'm not really surprised. There are no dead-end biosynthetic pathways in nature. If a compound is synthesized by an organism, there is always another one who is capable of degrading it. However, antibiotics are really important cases, because we exclusively use them for fighting bacterial infections and through the years the clinical isolates are growing resistant.
This study in the Church lab makes the case that there is a huge reservoir of antibiotic-resistance pathways already present in nature that we should be aware of and be able to deal with in very near future (I sound like an alarmist). As you see in the figure below from the original paper, each of the soil samples can grow on at least one antibiotic as the sole carbon source.
Phylogenetic distribution of these bacteria is quite fascinating. The range is diverse and encompasses many known infection agents. These results show the existence of a notable reservoir of genes conferring antibiotic resistance and worse case scenario, treating an infection may boost the chance of another one.
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