DISCOMIX: Dissemination of antimicrobial resistance by community mixing events
Project overview
Participants
More related research
Global goals
- 3. Good health and well-being
- 6. Clean water and sanitation
- 14. Life below water
Short summary
Environmental factors and species interactions have key roles in the successful dissemination of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment. The DISCOMIX projects assess how community mixing events contribute and regulate AMR spread in aquatic ecosystems.
The primary aim of this project is to assess the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance in aquatic environments through the lens of community coalescence (Fig. 1). The motivation is to understand how coalescence (mixing) events influence community properties and functions and to what extent this process contributes to the spread of AMR. Hence, I address the following research questions and target three water mixing scenarios where community coalescence occurs:
- How do the hydrodynamic properties of waterbodies, such as stratification and mixing, induce community coalescence and contribute to the spread of resistance genes? This question will be answered through a large-scale metagenomic data analysis, covering a wide range of freshwater and marine ecosystems with different stratification and mixing properties in order to understand the internal dissemination of resistance across depths.
- What is the fate of resistance genes crossing the boundaries of aquatic habitats? This question will be answered by a field survey to understand how the mixing of freshwater and saline seawater (i.e., in estuaries) affects community composition and functions, and thereby, determine the spread of ARGs across distinct aquatic environments.
- How does historical antibiotic exposure contribute to the establishment success of resistance genes following community coalescence? This question targets sewage communities that are exposed to high selective pressures from antibiotics and their subsequent mixing into freshwaters. Here, both community- and gene-level mechanisms that regulate the establishment of resistance genes in the coalesced community will be investigated.
By addressing these research questions, this project generates fundamental knowledge on the dissemination and regulation of AMR by ecological processes. This in turn will provide essential foundation for better strategies for managing antimicrobial resistance in a wide range of aquatic ecosystems.
