The EMBARK webinars are back for the spring season. This year we have an exciting lineup with representatives from other JPIAMR programs joining forces with speakers from this program. For the spring, we welcome Sabrina Giebner, Andrew Stubbs and Frank van Leth who will share the stage with Thomas Berendonk, Luis Pedro Coelho and Johan Bengtsson-Palme from EMBARK. The first webinar is already next week!
April 19, 14:00 CEST Topic: AMR Surveillance in aquatic environments Sabrina Giebner (AquaticPollutantsTransNet) EMBARK speaker: Thomas Berendonk Moderator: Uli Klümper Aim of AquaticPollutantsTransNet: Improve stakeholders’ & citizens’ perception through active involvement in the reduction of aquatic pollutants in the water cycle Registration link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_h8-CkMMeQpixgDQ8Jtz7Dg
May 17, 14:00 CEST Topic: ARG annotation Andrew Stubbs (Seq4AMR) EMBARK speaker: Luis Pedro Coelho Moderator: Svetlana Ugarčina Perović Aim of Seq4AMR: Establish a strategy to link AMR NGS stakeholders and individual fields of NGS technologies, algorithms, quality standards, teaching/training and sequence databanks Registration link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_L7QmrDM5Rn2sWRnC7FnhVQ
June 14, 14:00 CEST Topic: Strategies for AMR surveillance with an One Health approach Frank van Leth (OASIS) EMBARK speaker: Johan Bengtsson-Palme Moderator: Anna Abramova Aim of OASIS: Optimise the Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) approach as a rapid, domain-, and setting-appropriate AMR surveillance strategy, within a One Health context Registration link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-XjYy26RTlWyWLWMFagyOw
March digest features a review of novel methods to quantifying the physical linkage between specific antimicrobial resistance genes and mobile genetic elements, how traveling affects AMR, and more.
We are looking for speakers for our EMBARK webinars in 2023. If you want to share your groundbreaking research on antimicrobial resistance, please get in touch with us!
This very first 2023 AMR digest features global AMR use trends in food-producing animals, antibiotic resistance in the commensal human gut microbiota, functional metagenomics in clinical strains, and more!
Global trends in antimicrobial use in food-producing animals: 2020 to 2030 – Ranya Mulchandani – Plos Global Public Health *The global usage of veterinary antimicrobials in 2020 at 99,502 tonnes, and -on current trends- project an 8% increase by 2030 (~107,500 tonnes). In 2020, China, Brazil, India, and United States remain in the top 5 countries for absolute antimicrobial use in tonnes. There is still no publicly available country-level reports of veterinary antimicrobial use in the majority of countries of the world!
[🚨Paper] How many tonnes of antimicrobials are used globally each year in food-producing animals🐄🐓🐷🐑? In 2020, we estimate this to be ~99,500 tonnes and -on current trends- project a 8%⬆️ by 2030 (~107,500 tonnes)… (1/5)https://t.co/SKjkmeKZuepic.twitter.com/13Lmd9vN3C
Excited to share our recent paper out in @STOTEN_journal led by PhD candidate Mehedi Hasan Tarek. We leveraged insights from metagenomic analysis of wastewater samples to propose "indicator genes" as monitoring targets for antibiotic resistance https://t.co/DKieOzeZNv
Please check out our updated preprint on how "Hospital and urban wastewaters shape the structure and active resistome of environmental biofilms"https://t.co/E0Kvjyiqsu
Characterization of antibiotic resistomes by reprogrammed bacteriophage-enabled functional metagenomics in clinical strains – Gábor Apjok – Nature Microbiology *A functional metagenomics pipeline called Reprogrammed Bacteriophage Particle Assisted Multi-species Functional Metagenomics (DEEPMINE). The authors use of T7 bacteriophage with exchanged tail fibres and targeted mutagenesis to expand phage host-specificity and efficiency for functional metagenomics. By screening for ARGs in soil and gut microbiomes and clinical genomes against 13 antibiotics, the authors demonstrate that this approach substantially expands the list of identified ARGs.
Out today in @bioRxiv – #diphtheria reemergence, global genomic framework, and bioinformatics tool to detect antimicrobial resistance and virulence features from Corynebacterium diphtheriae genomes https://t.co/f5hbnednit
This AMR digest features overview of sewage resistomes from most countries on Earth and importance of sewage surveillance of antibiotic resistance, latest news on inner secrets of Asgard archaea and microbiomes of Galapagos marine iguanas… and lots of Santas hats here and there. Happy #AMR reading!
Defining the Benefits of Antibiotic Resistance in Commensals and the Scope for Resistance Optimization – Kristofer Wollein Waldetoft – Microbial Ecology * Antibiotic resistance is commonly viewed as universally costly, regardless of which bacterial cells express resistance. In this paper, the authors derive an opposing logic, where resistance in commensal bacteria can lead to reductions in pathogen density and improved outcomes on both the patient and public health scales (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Potential costs and benefits of antibiotic resistance in commensal organisms.
Mysterious Asgard archaea microbes reveal their inner secrets – Jan Löwe – Nature News and Views * Asgard archaeal cells have been grown successfully in the laboratory and their internal architecture offers clues to the early evolution of eukaryotic cells. Have a look inside a proposed relative of our cellular ancestors!
Guts within guts: the microbiome of the intestinal helminth parasite Ascaris suum is derived but distinct from its host – Ankur Midha, Víctor Hugo Jarquín-Díaz, Friederike Ebner, Ulrike Löber, Rima Hayani, Arkadi Kundik, Alessio Cardilli, Emanuel Heitlinger, Sofia Kirke Forslund & Susanne Hartmann – Microbiome * Intestinal helminths are extremely prevalent among humans and animals, and live in intimate contact with the host gut microbiota and harbor bacteria within their own intestines. This study shows that a nematode infection reduces the microbiome diversity of the host gut, and that the nematode gut represents a selective bacterial niche harboring bacteria that are derived but distinct from the host gut.
Genome-resolved insight into the reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes in aquatic microbial community – Zahra Goodarzi – Scientific Reports * This study shows the distribution of ARGs in the Caspian Sea ecosystem (Figure 3). To this end, the authors performed genome-resolved metagenomic analyses of deeply sequenced depth profile metagenomes of the Caspian Sea and applied Hidden Markov models. They further investigated how ecological strategies of resistance bacteria affect the ARGs they contain. Comparative analysis revealed that Acidimicrobiia and Actinobacteria characterized by streamlined genomes modify the antibiotic target via mutation to develop antibiotic resistance rather than carrying extra resistance genes.
Figure 3 Antibiotic resistance gene profile of the Caspian Sea Bacteria
The bacterial hand print of my 5yo son, after he finished playing outside 🙂 We had a group activity at daycare to prove how washing your hands **with soap** actually makes a difference 💪🧫👩🔬 pic.twitter.com/qok7nYlDle
Time flies and it is time for the last EMBARK webinar of 2022. This month, we are pleased to have Joakim Larsson talk about the environment’s role antibiotic resistance and Antti Karkman present hosts of antibiotic resistance genes in urban sewage. Welcome on Thursday December 15! Registration link below.
Dec 15, 14:00 UTC+2 Joakim Larsson – On the environment’s role in evolution, transmission and surveillance of antibiotic resistance Antti V. Karkman – Host and vehicles of antibiotic resistance genes in urban sewage [Register here]
