Identification of antimicrobial resistance genes in metagenomic data

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance mechanisms became a menace to the survival of humanity thanks to the prolific resistance gene dissemination between critically health related pathogen microorganisms. One of the mechanisms that contribute to this bacterial resistance is the collection of genes comprised in microbial genomes, be it plasmid or a chromosome, responsible for generating specific antibiotic resistance. The nomenclature resistome is given to this set of genes (Crofts et al., 2018). Omic technics, such as metagenomics, allowed further development of resistome studies, widely evaluating genome extracted from environmental samples and measuring the genetic mechanisms distributed between different components of the microbial communities (McArthur and Wright 2014). Most of the microorganisms living in these environments cannot be cultured, therefore are unknown to researchers. Metagenomics comes as an important tool, since it accesses the whole microbial biochemical potential in a given sample by extracting its total DNA, where interest genes can be identified through a functional or sequence approach (Guazzaroni et al., 2015). As a result, by exploring resistome diversity, would be possible to classify antimicrobial resistance genetic elements, shedding light to new resistance mechanisms, and identify new microorganisms that possesses said mechanisms, evaluating its distribution in Brazilian ecosystems. Hence, this project set its focus on studying the understanding of antibiotic resistance gene distribution through a varied set of Brazilian biomes.