Research Directions:
Environmental genomics
Bioanalysis and biotechnology
Marine biodiversity
Ecology and ecosystem management
Description:
The necessity of the present project BioResist (ID: 25326) stands on the rise of multi-resistant bacteria which is one of the most critical threats to global health. Many bacterial species evolved the ability to tolerate antibiotics long before humans started to mass-produce them to prevent and treat infectious diseases. The selection pressure in the environment might have played a key role as the driving force of the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance mechanisms. In this regard, there is an urgent need to get a better understanding on how the extreme physicochemical and geochemical conditions in the environment can favour the selection of resistant microbes. The main goal of BioResist is to explore the antibiotic resistance phenomenon in microbial communities from extreme environments, its evolutionary origin and its ecological significance, to unravel the complex and interrelated roles of environmental sources and to evaluate possible interconnections with global health. BioResist will investigate the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, resistance genes and mobile genetic elements in a wide range of extreme environments such as the hot and metal-enriched hydrothermal vent environments of the Hellenic Volcanic Arc including the deep subsurface of Santorini caldera (through ocean drilling). We will follow metagenomic sequencing approaches in environmental samples, genomic analysis of microbial isolates, resistance experiments for a series of environmental stressors, we will apply state-of-the-art computational methods to study in detail the resistome encoded by the microbiota, and we will perform a comprehensive geologic, (bio)mineralogic and geochemical characterization of the investigated sites.