FFoQSI: 2.2.1 Livestock Resistome
Abstract
Antibiotics have been used for decades in livestock agriculture for both therapeutic and non-therapeutic administrations. Antimicrobials administered for the purpose of growth promotion are given to all animals at sub-therapeutic levels while individual or small numbers of animals (prophylaxis) or the entire herd (metaphylaxis) may be treated with higher levels of antimicrobials (therapeutic) to treat infectious disease. These differing doses of antibiotics are important because they are at the core of regulatory efforts, with many countries banning or regulating non-therapeutic veterinary antibiotics that have human medical importance. The use of non-therapeutic (low-dose) application of antibiotics as growth promoters has been linked with beneficial performance aspects. However, there are data that supports the fact that this procedure contributes to the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (ARBs), thus promoting the antibiotic resistance problem in animal and human pathogens. Resistance patterns among bacteria have traditionally been studied using cultural methods to select for resistant bacteria. However, when we move away from the well-studied bacteria, the vast majority of microorganisms cannot be cultured, at least not by standard methods. With the recent advances in next-generation sequencing techniques, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing has frequently been used to study the alterations of the gut microbiota induced by antibiotic feed additives. However, the methodologies used in almost all of these projects to study the resistance factors, were either culture- or PCR-based approaches, which can only provide information on narrow groups of antibiotic resistance genes. This limits the possible scope of this methodology and thereby veils much of the diversity of species and resistance factors, particularly in environmental communities. Shotgun metagenomics sequencing, albeit expensive, is a reliable alternative tool that could provide a comprehensive and high-resolution analysis of the microbiome and the resistome. In this approach, the total DNA of a complete community is randomly fragmented and then sequenced by high-throughput sequencing. The purpose of this project is to increase the understanding of the dynamics and spread of antibiotic resistance in poultry. The animal reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (“the resistome”) will be characterized by investigating the dynamics of the interaction between resistant and non-resistant bacteria in the poultry microbiome. The survey will give a deep insight into the presence and dynamic of the resistome in poultry. In greater detail, it will be possible to estimate the influence of the environment as well as the effect of applied alternative feed supplements on the dynamic of resistance genes in the microbiome of livestock animals. These data are important for the assessment and further improvement of different livestock production and antibiotic-free feeding regimes, including the principles of animal-well-fare for the production of safe animal-derived food and minimizing the spread of antibiotic resistance genes.
animal nutrition antibiotic resistance food chain poultry Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) resistome
Publikationen
Metatranscriptomic Analysis of the Chicken Gut Resistome Response to In-Feed Antibiotics and Natural Feed Additives.
Autoren: Koorakula, R; Schiavinato, M; Ghanbari, M; Wegl, G; Grabner, N; Koestelbauer, A; Klose, V; Dohm, JC; Domig, KJ; Jahr: 2022
Journal articles
Storage media and RNA extraction approaches substantially influence the recovery and integrity of livestock fecal microbial RNA.
Autoren: Koorakula, R; Ghanbari, M; Schiavinato, M; Wegl, G; Dohm, JC; Domig, KJ; Jahr: 2022
Journal articles
Project staff
Konrad Domig
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Konrad Domig
konrad.domig@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-75453
Project Leader
01.01.2018 - 31.03.2022
Juliane Dohm
Assoc. Prof. Priv.-Doz. Dr. Juliane Dohm
dohm@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-79156
Project Staff
01.01.2018 - 31.03.2022
BOKU partners
External partners
Biomin Holding Gmbh
none
partner