Grant: Canadian Microbiome Initiative - LOI

Multiple antibiotic resistance in human pathogens has increased over the past decades and challenged our ability to treat bacterial infections. Many of the resistance genes have not evolved within the pathogenic clinical isolates but were acquired by lateral gene transfer which is a common mechanism for the exchange of genetic information between bacterial species. We recently showed that genes potentially conferring glycopeptide resistance are highly prevalent in the human bowel flora. Some of these genes were shown to be present in novel commensal anaerobic bacterial species of the human gut suggesting that these bacteria may serve as a reservoir for these resistance genes. We wish to test the hypothesis that the human gut and naso-oral microbiome may harbour resistance genes that could have the potential to be transferred to pathogenic species and address the question of how the use of antibiotics in humans may affect these reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes.