REDTEAR Project

The Role of free Extracellular DNA in determining The Environmental Antibiotic Resistome

               

Abstract: The ever-increasing emergence of antibiotic resistance seeks greater attention all over the world because its consequences on human health and global economy are foreseen to be as dramatic as those caused by cancer. Morbidity and mortality associated to multiple antibiotic resistance (AR) largely increased in the last decades, and the use of the few last-resort drugs available to treat multi-drug resistant (MDR) infections is becoming a common medical practice in several parts of the world. Europe alone has been reported to have a death rate of about 25000 per year due to antibiotic resistance. This situation is caused by a general misuse or abuse of antibiotics, and by the rapid adaptation of bacteria to drugs by acquiring resistance mechanisms, generally by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) of Antibiotic Resistance Genes (ARGs). Halting the spread of microbial resistance is thus a priority at a global scale, and it involves dedicated actions and research in both clinical/veterinary settings and in the environment. Waters are exposed to ARG pollution through diffuse and punctual sources. Furthermore ARGs can be present in intracellular DNA (iDNA) and in extracellular DNA (eDNA). The contribution of the latter to the spread of ARGs by HGT is understudied. Thus the REDTEAR Project aims i) to investigate eDNA as a vector of ARGs dissemination in the aquatic environment, ii) to understand if eDNA with its ARGs can be up taken by natural bacteria by transformation and iii) to investigate the ecological success of the transformed bacteria.

PI: Sivalingam Periyasamy

Supervisor: Andrea Di Cesare

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101025891.

Poster by Siva at EDAR Gothenburg 2022 (click it for the full scale in PDF)