Wright, G.D. & A.G. McArthur. 2015. A bioinformatic platform for the characterization of antibiotic resistance in bacterial genomes and metagenomes. Presentation at the 2015 Interscience Conference of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, San Diego, California.
The increasingly routine sequencing of bacterial genomes in biomedical research and the clinical lab requires access to easy to use, efficient, and accurate bioinformatic tools for analysis of bacterial traits from virulence to drug resistance. To contribute to this growing need, we have developed a platform for the investigation of antibiotic resistance elements, the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (http://arpcard.mcmaster.ca/). This resource includes a manually curated database of over 3000 resistance genes and associated literature, protein structures, and target antibiotics. Associated with this platform are tools to aid in the study of resistance including the Resistance Gene Identifier (RGI) that can analyze genomic data for the presence of resistance elements. Our goal is to accurately predict resistance phenotype from genomic data. Our analysis of many genomes and associated antibiograms reveals a reservoir of ‘silent’ resistance genes that are predicted to encode viable resistance elements yet the phenotype is drug sensitive. Our efforts to manage these issues along with identifying and adding new resistance genes will be presented.
