TY - JOUR
T1 - Good microbes, bad genes? The dissemination of antimicrobial resistance in the human microbiome
AU - Crits-Christoph, Alexander
AU - Hallowell, Haley Anne
AU - Koutouvalis, Kalia
AU - Suez, Jotham
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - A global rise in antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic bacteria has proved to be a major public health threat, with the rate of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections increasing over time. The gut microbiome has been studied as a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) that can be transferred to bacterial pathogens via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of conjugative plasmids and mobile genetic elements (the gut resistome). Advances in metagenomic sequencing have facilitated the identification of resistome modulators, including live microbial therapeutics such as probiotics and fecal microbiome transplantation that can either expand or reduce the abundances of ARG-carrying bacteria in the gut. While many different gut microbes encode for ARGs, they are not uniformly distributed across, or transmitted by, various members of the microbiome, and not all are of equal clinical relevance. Both experimental and theoretical approaches in microbial ecology have been applied to understand differing frequencies of ARG horizontal transfer between commensal microbes as well as between commensals and pathogens. In this commentary, we assess the evidence for the role of commensal gut microbes in encoding antimicrobial resistance genes, the degree to which they are shared both with other commensals and with pathogens, and the host and environmental factors that can impact resistome dynamics. We further discuss novel sequencing-based approaches for identifying ARGs and predicting future transfer events of clinically relevant ARGs from commensals to pathogens.
AB - A global rise in antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic bacteria has proved to be a major public health threat, with the rate of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections increasing over time. The gut microbiome has been studied as a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) that can be transferred to bacterial pathogens via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of conjugative plasmids and mobile genetic elements (the gut resistome). Advances in metagenomic sequencing have facilitated the identification of resistome modulators, including live microbial therapeutics such as probiotics and fecal microbiome transplantation that can either expand or reduce the abundances of ARG-carrying bacteria in the gut. While many different gut microbes encode for ARGs, they are not uniformly distributed across, or transmitted by, various members of the microbiome, and not all are of equal clinical relevance. Both experimental and theoretical approaches in microbial ecology have been applied to understand differing frequencies of ARG horizontal transfer between commensal microbes as well as between commensals and pathogens. In this commentary, we assess the evidence for the role of commensal gut microbes in encoding antimicrobial resistance genes, the degree to which they are shared both with other commensals and with pathogens, and the host and environmental factors that can impact resistome dynamics. We further discuss novel sequencing-based approaches for identifying ARGs and predicting future transfer events of clinically relevant ARGs from commensals to pathogens.
KW - Microbiome
KW - antibiotic resistance genes (ARG)
KW - antibiotics
KW - antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
KW - fecal microbiome transplantation (FMT)
KW - metagenomics
KW - probiotics
KW - resistome
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U2 - 10.1080/19490976.2022.2055944
DO - 10.1080/19490976.2022.2055944
M3 - Review article
C2 - 35332832
AN - SCOPUS:85127061635
SN - 1949-0976
VL - 14
JO - Gut Microbes
JF - Gut Microbes
IS - 1
M1 - 2055944
ER -