Functional metagenomics and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) – an integrative approach to explore the antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and gene transfer elements (GTEs) from river sediments under tropical conditions.
Funding:
Swiss National Science Foundation
Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships for Foreign Students
The global resurgence of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) is the major concern in biomedical research prompting a wakeup call among researchers at an alarming rate. It is one of the grandest challenges of 21st century to provide clean and potable water to human needs. Despite the antibiotic resistance in clinical settings have been well studied, little is known with regard to the diversity, distribution and origin of resistance genes in non-clinical environments. In developing countries anthropogenic influences plays a vital role in aggravating water demand by contaminating water resources. India is endowed with a rich and vast diversity of natural resources particularly rivers. However, in the recent past the burden of adverse contamination from untreated and partially treated hospital effluents, heavy metal contaminants, agricultural runoff, cattle manure, and human driven open defecation resulted in distribution of multi drug resistant (MDR) pathogens and antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) in aquatic ecosystems. To address this problem an advanced technology that can reliably identify the drug resistance genes is vital to provide the baseline information to reduce the risk factors and to strengthen the international surveillance of increasing problem of antimicrobial resistance. The objectives of this research project are to (i) Analysis of Anti-microbial resistance (ESBL) from heterlogously expressed metagenomes, (ii) Next generation sequencing of environmental DNA to analyze the ARGs in microbial community (iii) To analyse the conjugative efficiency of resistant genes containing plasmids.
Contact and supervisors:
Dr. Periyasamy Sivalingam (Postdoc)
Supervisor: John Poté
Partners: Jamal Mohamed College-Bharathidasan University (Prof. Kandasamy Prabakar)