New Worlds Discovered Towards the End of Antibiotic Era: Resistome and Mobilome

• Main Authors: Aycan GÜNDOĞDU, Emine ALP MEŞE
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bilimsel Tip Yayinevi 2015-12-01
• Series: Flora Infeksiyon Hastalıkları ve Klinik Mikrobiyoloji Dergisi
• Subjects: Antimicrobial resistance; Resistome; Mobilome; Metagenomics
• Online Access: http://www.floradergisi.org/getFileContent.aspx?op=REDPDF&file_name=2015-20-04-167-173.pdf

Antibiotics, which have increased human life expectancy and quality since their discovery in the mid 20th century, and the antibiotic era associated with them have come to an end with increased prevelance of multiple drug resistance in pathogens. Antimicrobial resistance genes, which can be found naturally across biosphere, can acquire a dynamic structure and deplace pathogen strains. This system, which is defi ned as resistome (the total resistance genes content) - mobilome (the total mobile genetic elements content) cycle, is proposed as a hypothesis explaining the fl ux of antibiotic resistance from environment to the clinic. Accordingly, the main reason behind the emergence of strains in the last century, which are multiple drug resistant with increased antibiotic suppression, extended drug resistant, and resistant to all antibiotics, is the resistome-mobilome cycle between soil microorganisms community (soil microbiata), each of which are a resistant gene pool, food microbiata, aquatic microbiata, waste water, human microbiata and the clinic. Since current conventional microbiological methods cannot sample a majority of microorganisms and cannot cover the entire resistance gene reservoirs, metagenomic approaches have emerged. Metagenomic approaches, which are able to analyze the entire genetical material within environmental samples without the requirement of culturing, is the basis for recent resistome-mobilome studies. A better understanding of resistome-mobilome structures in the nature will lead to careful industrial and clinical use of antibiotics, development of effective biosafety approaches for the control of pathogen and resistance gene spread, as well as the design of new generation antibiotics or alternative and complementary therapies such as bacteriophage therapy or probiotic therapies. In this review, the relation of antibiotic resistance with the microbial ecosystem is summarized based on recent findings, and also the role of metagenomics, as the new paradigm of molecular microbiology, in the analysis of the corresponding relation is demostrated.