A high-throughput plate-based screening approach for identifying gut microbiome-derived genes of antibiotic inactivation

Abstract

A better understanding of the occurrences of collective resistance in the human body is crucial for the improvement of antibiotic treatment efficacy. Collective resistance has been previously studied in the context of co-infection models, but it has not yet been explored in the context of inherent bacterial communities in the human body. The human gut microbiome is a large community of bacteria that encounter orally administered antibiotics during every treatment cycle. While antibiotic resistance in the gut microbiome has been characterized, antibiotic inactivation has not been explored. If antibiotics are being inactivated before reaching their target infection, the treatment will be ineffective against the infection and cause harm to the host. This project builds on previous studies surrounding the screening of human gut microbial communities for gene isolation. As previously studied, metagenomic libraries created from the microbial DNA from donor fecal samples can be screened for antibiotic inactivation using a liquid culture pooling method. This study intends to develop a higher throughput and more efficient method for isolating gut-specific genes of antibiotic inactivation using agar plates.