Project description:<p>The study of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in infectious diarrhea has generally been limited to cultivation, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and targeted PCR assays. When individual strains of significance are identified, whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing of important clones and clades is performed. Genes that encode resistance to antibiotics have been detected in environmental, insect, human and animal metagenomes and are known as "resistomes". While metagenomic datasets have been mined to characterize the healthy human gut resistome in the Human Microbiome Project and MetaHIT and in a Yanomani Amerindian cohort, directed metagenomic sequencing has not been used to examine the epidemiology of AMR. Especially in developing countries where sanitation is poor, diarrhea and enteric pathogens likely serve to disseminate antibiotic resistance elements of clinical significance. Unregulated use of antibiotics further exacerbates the problem by selection for acquisition of resistance. This is exemplified by recent reports of multiple antibiotic resistance in Shigella strains in India, in Escherichia coli in India and Pakistan, and in nontyphoidal Salmonella (NTS) in South-East Asia. We propose to use deep metagenomic sequencing and genome level assembly to study the epidemiology of AMR in stools of children suffering from diarrhea. Here the epidemiology component will be surveillance and analysis of the microbial composition (to the bacterial species/strain level where possible) and its constituent antimicrobial resistance genetic elements (such as plasmids, integrons, transposons and other mobile genetic elements, or MGEs) in samples from a cohort where diarrhea is prevalent and antibiotic exposure is endemic. The goal will be to assess whether consortia of specific mobile antimicrobial resistance elements associate with species/strains and whether their presence is enhanced or amplified in diarrheal microbiomes and in the presence of antibiotic exposure. This work could potentially identify clonal complexes of organisms and MGEs with enhanced resistance and the potential to transfer this resistance to other enteric pathogens.</p> <p>We have performed WGS, metagenomic assembly and gene/protein mapping to examine and characterize the types of AMR genes and transfer elements (transposons, integrons, bacteriophage, plasmids) and their distribution in bacterial species and strains assembled from DNA isolated from diarrheal and non-diarrheal stools. The samples were acquired from a cohort of pediatric patients and controls from Colombia, South America where antibiotic use is prevalent. As a control, the distribution and abundance of AMR genes can be compared to published studies where resistome gene lists from healthy cohort sequences were compiled. Our approach is more epidemiologic in nature, as we plan to identify and catalogue antimicrobial elements on MGEs capable of spread through a local population and further we will, where possible, link mobile antimicrobial resistance elements with specific strains within the population.</p>

Project description:Melioidosis, caused by Gram negative bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei, is a major type of community-acquired septicemia in Southeast Asia and Northern Australia with high mortality and morbidity rate. More accurate and rapid diagnosis is needed for improving the management of septicemic melioidosis. We previously identified 37-gene candidate signature to distinguish septicemic melioidosis from sepsis due to other pathogens. The aims of this current study were to independently validate our previous biomarker and consolidate gene selection from each of our microarray data set for establishing a targeted assay for the differential diagnosis of melioidosis. Blood samples were collected from patients who presented with severe inflammatory response syndromes from 3 provincial hospitals in Northeast of Thailand during September 2009 and November 2011. Only culture-confirmed sepsis were included in the study (n=166). We generated a new microarray dataset comprising of 29 patients with septicemic melioidosis and 54 patients with sepsis due to other pathogens. Validation of the 37-gene signature using this new dataset demonstrated the prediction accuracy of approximately 80% for detecting type of sepsis. In order to develop a nanoliter-scale high throughput PCR technology, we further identified additional gene signature from this new microarray dataset and by revisiting our published data. Altogether 85 genes including 6 housekeeping genes were selected. Using multi-steps iteration approach we could reduce the number of biomarkers to 12 genes while the performance is comparable to that of the full panel. The high performance (accuracy >70%) of this 12-gene signature could be validated in a second independent set of samples. The 12-gene panel identified by our study provides high performance for the differential diagnosis of septicemic melioidosis. This finding will be useful for improving the management of septicemic melioidosis in term of diagnosis, treatment and follow up. Total RNA from whole blood obtained from patients with sepsis caused by B.pseudomallei (n=29) or other pathogens (n=54) and uninfected controls (28 healthy and 27 subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus) were collected. In order to validate the published signature, microarray data were generated from these samples. This dataset was also used for an independent selection of signature for septicemic melioidosis. The same RNA samples were used for validation by a high throughput real-time PCR technique, Fluidigm.

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