Plants mine the soil to obtain essential nutrients and in so doing, they can take up several antibiotics produced in the soil by certain microorganisms. One such antibiotic is kanamycin. Plants are sensitive to antibiotics and appear to have developed different mechanisms of resistance. For example, Arabidopsis plants possess the Atwbc19 gene that confers kanamycin resistance. Arabidopsis plants exposed to kanamycin are known to reduce their iron uptake which might allow them to exhibit resistance. In addition, when citrate is present in the media, iron uptake is drastically reduced. Here, we propose a model that accounts for the relationships between kanamycin, the Atwbc19 gene, citrate and metal uptake. Experimental data was generated to examine the effect of kanamycin on metal uptake in the presence or absence of the citrate. MS media was used with either 0μM citrate or 100μM citrate in presence or absence of kanamycin. After 7, 10, 13 days of germination, the plants were harvested, images captured, and dried samples were weighed and sent for metal analysis. The results confirmed iron uptake deficiency in mutant plants exposed to kanamycin when grown on media with citrate. This data corroborated the proposed model and allowed us to understand how metal uptake and antibiotic resistance are connected.
