Tag: Fredrik Boulund

BMC Genomics today published a paper first-authored by my long-time colleague Fredrik Boulund, which describes a computational screen of genomes and metagenomes for novel qnr fluoroquinolone resistance genes (1). The study makes use of Fredrik’s well-designed and updated qnr-prediction pipeline, but in contrast to his previous publication based on the pipeline from 2012 (2), we here study a 20-fold larger dataset of almost 13 terabases of sequence data. Based on this data, the pipeline predicted 611 putative qnr genes, including all previously described plasmid-mediated qnr gene families. 20 of the predicted genes were previously undescribed, and of these nine were selected for experimental validation. Six of those tested genes improved the survivability under ciprofloxacin exposure when expressed in Escherichia coli. The study shows that qnr genes are almost ubiquitous in environmental microbial communities. This study also lends further credibility to the hypothesis that environmental bacterial communities can act as sources of previously uncharacterized antibiotic resistance genes (3-7). The study can be read in its entirety here.

References

1. Boulund F, Berglund F, Flach C-F, Bengtsson-Palme J, Marathe NP, Larsson DGJ, Kristiansson E: Computational discovery and functional validation of novel fluoroquinolone resistance genes in public metagenomic data sets. BMC Genomics, 18, 682 (2017). doi: 10.1186/s12864-017-4064-0
2. Boulund F, Johnning A, Pereira MB, Larsson DGJ, Kristiansson E: A novel method to discover fluoroquinolone antibiotic resistance (qnr) genes in fragmented nucleotide sequences. BMC Genomics, 13, 695 (2012). doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-13-695
3. Bengtsson-Palme J, Larsson DGJ: Antibiotic resistance genes in the environment: prioritizing risks. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 13, 369 (2015). doi: 10.1038/nrmicro3399-c1
4. Allen HK, Donato J, Wang HH et al.: Call of the wild: antibiotic resistance genes in natural environments. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 8, 251–259 (2010).
5. Berendonk TU, Manaia CM, Merlin C et al.: Tackling antibiotic resistance: the environmental framework. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 13, 310–317 (2015).
6. Martinez JL: Bottlenecks in the transferability of antibiotic resistance from natural ecosystems to human bacterial pathogens. Frontiers in Microbiology, 2, 265 (2011).
7. Finley RL, Collignon P, Larsson DGJ et al.: The scourge of antibiotic resistance: the important role of the environment. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 57, 704–710 (2013).

The first work in which I have employed metagenomics to investigate antibiotic resistance has been accepted in Frontiers in Microbiology, and is (at the time of writing) available as a provisional PDF. In the paper (1), which is co-authored by Fredrik Boulund, Jerker Fick, Erik Kristiansson and Joakim Larsson, we have used shotgun metagenomic sequencing of an Indian lake polluted by dumping of waste from pharmaceutical production. We used this data to describe the diversity of antibiotic resistance genes and the genetic context of those, to try to predict their genetic transferability. We found resistance genes against essentially every major class of antibiotics, as well as large abundances of genes responsible for mobilization of genetic material. Resistance genes were estimated to be 7000 times more abundant in the polluted lake than in a Swedish lake included for comparison, where only eight resistance genes were found. The abundances of resistance genes have previously only been matched by river sediment subject to pollution from pharmaceutical production (2). In addition, we describe twenty-six known and twenty-one putative novel plasmids from the Indian lake metagenome, indicating that there is a large potential for horizontal gene transfer through conjugation. Based on the wide range and high abundance of known resistance factors detected, we believe that it is plausible that novel resistance genes are also present in the lake. We conclude that environments polluted with waste from antibiotic manufacturing could be important reservoirs for mobile antibiotic resistance genes. This work further highlights previous findings that pharmaceutical production settings could provide sufficient selection pressure from antibiotics (3) to drive the development of multi-resistant bacteria (4,5), resistance which may ultimately end up in pathogenic species (6,7). The paper can be read in its entirety here.

References:

1. Bengtsson-Palme J, Boulund F, Fick J, Kristiansson E, Larsson DGJ: Shotgun metagenomics reveals a wide array of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile elements in a polluted lake in India. Frontiers in Microbiology, Volume 5, Issue 648 (2014). doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2014.00648
2. Kristiansson E, Fick J, Janzon A, Grabic R, Rutgersson C, Weijdegård B, Söderström H, Larsson DGJ: Pyrosequencing of antibiotic-contaminated river sediments reveals high levels of resistance and gene transfer elements. PLoS ONE, Volume 6, e17038 (2011). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017038.
3. Larsson DGJ, de Pedro C, Paxeus N: Effluent from drug manufactures contains extremely high levels of pharmaceuticals. J Hazard Mater, Volume 148, 751–755 (2007). doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2007.07.008
4. Marathe NP, Regina VR, Walujkar SA, Charan SS, Moore ERB, Larsson DGJ, Shouche YS: A Treatment Plant Receiving Waste Water from Multiple Bulk Drug Manufacturers Is a Reservoir for Highly Multi-Drug Resistant Integron-Bearing Bacteria. PLoS ONE, Volume 8, e77310 (2013). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077310
5. Johnning A, Moore ERB, Svensson-Stadler L, Shouche YS, Larsson DGJ, Kristiansson E: Acquired genetic mechanisms of a multiresistant bacterium isolated from a treatment plant receiving wastewater from antibiotic production. Appl Environ Microbiol, Volume 79, 7256–7263 (2013). doi:10.1128/AEM.02141-13
6. Pruden A, Larsson DGJ, Amézquita A, Collignon P, Brandt KK, Graham DW, Lazorchak JM, Suzuki S, Silley P, Snape JR., et al.: Management options for reducing the release of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes to the environment. Environ Health Perspect, Volume 121, 878–885 (2013). doi:10.1289/ehp.1206446
7. Finley RL, Collignon P, Larsson DGJ, McEwen SA, Li X-Z, Gaze WH, Reid-Smith R, Timinouni M, Graham DW, Topp E: The scourge of antibiotic resistance: the important role of the environment. Clin Infect Dis, Volume 57, 704–710 (2013). doi:10.1093/cid/cit355