Description
Antibiotic resistance is recognized by the WHO as a major threat to human health globally, and is estimated to account for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. In the last decade, evidence has mounted suggesting that the environment plays an important role in this development. The external environment appears to act as a source of resistance genes that can end up in human pathogens, but it is also an important dissemination route allowing spread of resistant bacteria between different environments and human populations.
This thesis aims to use large-scale DNA sequencing techniques to better understand the risks associated with environmental antibiotic resistance. The thesis deals with quantifying the number of resistance genes in different environments using metagenomics, but also takes on the important task of contextualizing this information with taxonomic data, concentrations of antibiotics present, and the genomic contexts of the identified resistance genes. This way, the thesis contributes knowledge about risk environments for resistance development and transmission, which can be used to guide risk assessment and management schemes to delay or reduce clinical resistance development.
