Antimicrobial 'Resistome' Proposed from Metagenomic Microbial Sequence Set

In PLOS Biology, researchers at the Technical University of Denmark tally the antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG) found in metagenomic sequences spanning about 214,100 samples representing nearly 800 host types profiled for more than 6,300 prior projects. With computational analyses focused on ARGs, 16S ribosomal RNA genes, and 18S rRNA genes in the metagenomic sequences, obtained from the European Nucleotide Archive database, the team began teasing apart ARG features and sampling type-related ARG patterns. "With this data resource," the authors suggest, "we have taken a step towards enabling the scientific community to utilize the wealth of information in these metagenomic samples to broaden our understanding of the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance and changes in microbiomes at both local and global scales through time and environments."