Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are considered by the World Health Organization to be one of the biggest global human health threats today. The mechanism research and risk assessment of bacterial resistance have always been the focus of global scientists in the fields of biology, medicine and environment.
The research result of Professor Qian Haifeng's team from the School of Environmental Sciences in ZJUT，titled "Assessment of Global Health Risk of Antibiotic Resistance Genes", was published online on Nature Communications on March 23, 2022.
Qian’s team analyzed at the metagenomic level from the data of 4,572 samples from four major global environments and revealed that ARGs are prevalent of in terrestrial, aquatic, engineered habitats.
From the public database of nearly 30,000 bacteria reference genome, the study evaluated the overall health risk for each ARG human accessibility, mobility, human pathogenicity and clinical availability, establishing a new ARGs human health risk assessment framework. It is of great practical significance to develop corresponding detection methods, supervision mechanism and treatment plans.
The work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and took the team one year to complete. Professor Josep Penuelas from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Professor Michael Gillings from Macquarie University in Australia also participated in the work.
