Phages rarely encode antibiotic resistance genes: a cautionary tale for virome analyses
Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are pervasive in gut microbiota, but it remains unclear how often ARGs are transferred, particularly to pathogens. Traditionally, ARG spread is attributed to horizontal transfer mediated either by DNA transformation, bacterial conjugation or generalized transductio...
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| Vydané v: | The ISME Journal Ročník 11; číslo 1; s. 237 - 247 |
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| Hlavní autori: | , , , , , |
| Médium: | Journal Article |
| Jazyk: | English |
| Vydavateľské údaje: |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
01.01.2017
Oxford University Press Nature Publishing Group |
| Predmet: | |
| ISSN: | 1751-7362, 1751-7370 |
| On-line prístup: | Získať plný text |
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| Shrnutí: | Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are pervasive in gut microbiota, but it remains unclear how often ARGs are transferred, particularly to pathogens. Traditionally, ARG spread is attributed to horizontal transfer mediated either by DNA transformation, bacterial conjugation or generalized transduction. However, recent viral metagenome (virome) analyses suggest that ARGs are frequently carried by phages, which is inconsistent with the traditional view that phage genomes rarely encode ARGs. Here we used exploratory and conservative bioinformatic strategies found in the literature to detect ARGs in phage genomes, and experimentally assessed a subset of ARG predicted using exploratory thresholds. ARG abundances in 1181 phage genomes were vastly overestimated using exploratory thresholds (421 predicted vs 2 known), due to low similarities and matches to protein unrelated to antibiotic resistance. Consistent with this, four ARGs predicted using exploratory thresholds were experimentally evaluated and failed to confer antibiotic resistance in
Escherichia coli
. Reanalysis of available human- or mouse-associated viromes for ARGs and their genomic context suggested that
bona fide
ARG attributed to phages in viromes were previously overestimated. These findings provide guidance for documentation of ARG in viromes, and reassert that ARGs are rarely encoded in phages. |
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| Bibliografia: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 content type line 23 PMCID: PMC5315482 |
| ISSN: | 1751-7362 1751-7370 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/ismej.2016.90 |