Freshwater viral metagenome reveals novel and functional phage-borne antibiotic resistance genes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Antibiotic resistance developed by bacteria is a significant threat to global health. Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) spread across different bacterial populations through multiple dissemination routes, including horizontal gene transfer mediated by bacteriophages. ARGs carried by bacteriophages are considered especially threatening due to their prolonged persistence in the environment, fast replication rates, and ability to infect diverse bacterial hosts. Several studies employing qPCR and viral metagenomics have shown that viral fraction and viral sequence reads in clinical and environmental samples carry many ARGs. However, only a few ARGs have been found in viral contigs assembled from metagenome reads, with most of these genes lacking effective antibiotic resista

SUBMITTER: Moon K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7265639 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature