November 30, 2018
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
More than 6,000 antibiotic resistance genes discovered in the gut microbiota
A European study has revealed the diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in the bacteria that make up the gut microbiota. Teams from Beaujon and Bichat Claude-Bernard hospitals in the Paris Public Hospital Network (AP-HP), Inra (MetaGenoPolis), the Institut Pasteur, Inserm, and Paris Diderot and Paris-Saclay Universities developed a novel bioinformatics method to predict the function of genes based on the 3D structure of the proteins they encode. The scientists, in collaboration with other European teams, then applied the method to a catalog of several million genes in the gut microbiota. This technique enabled them to identify more than 6,000 antibiotic resistance genes, which differed significantly from known genes. The research, published in the journal Nature Microbiology, illustrates the remarkable diversity of resistance genes in the bacteria that compose our gut microbiota.