摘要

抗生素耐药性已成为人类和动物健康的一个主要问题，因为治疗多种耐药微生物的替代治疗药物正在迅速减少。由于抗生素研究投入少，市场上缺乏有效的新型抗菌药物，使问题更加复杂化。探索环境抗生素抗性基因（ARGs）将有助于我们更好地了解细菌耐药机制，这可能是确定新药靶点的关键。由于大多数与环境有关的微生物尚未可培养，所以独立于培养的技术对于确定给定环境样品中存在哪些生物体并允许评估和利用其代表的遗传财富至关重要。宏基因组学是使用基于序列和基于功能的方法实现这些目标的有力工具。功能宏基因组学方法特别适合从自然环境中鉴定新的ARG，因为与基于序列的方法不同，它们不需要以前对这些基因的了解。这篇综述讨论了基于功能宏基因组学的ARG研究，并介绍了测量环境样品中的抗体组的新的可能性。

Antibiotic resistance has become a major concern for human and animal health, as therapeutic alternatives to treat multidrug-resistant microorganisms are rapidly dwindling. The problem is compounded by low investment in antibiotic research and lack of new effective antimicrobial drugs on the market. Exploring environmental antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) will help us to better understand bacterial resistance mechanisms, which may be the key to identifying new drug targets. Because most environment-associated microorganisms are not yet cultivable, culture-independent techniques are essential to determine which organisms are present in a given environmental sample and allow the assessment and utilization of the genetic wealth they represent. Metagenomics represents a powerful tool to achieve these goals using sequence-based and functional-based approaches. Functional metagenomic approaches are particularly well suited to the identification new ARGs from natural environments because, unlike sequence-based approaches, they do not require previous knowledge of these genes. This review discusses functional metagenomics-based ARG research and describes new possibilities for surveying the resistome in environmental samples.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-016-0866-x