Functional and Sequence-Specific Screening Protocols for the Detection of Novel Antimicrobial Resistance Genes in Metagenomic DNA

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an increasingly important global challenge for healthcare systems as well as agricultural food production systems. Our ability to prepare for, and respond to, emerging AMR threats is dependent on our knowledge of genes able to confer AMR that are circulating within various environmental, animal, and human microbiomes. Targeted, sequence-specific, detection of AMR genes and functional resistance assays, described here, carried out on metagenomic DNA gives us unique insights into the presence of AMR genes and how these are associated with mobile genetic elements that may be responsible for their dissemination and can also provide important information about the mechanisms of resistance underpinning the phenotype.