Rapid resistome mapping using nanopore sequencing

Abstract

The emergence of antibiotic resistance in human pathogens has become a major threat to modern medicine and in particular hospitalized patients. The outcome of antibiotic treatment can be affected by the composition of the gut resistome either by enabling resistance gene acquisition of infecting pathogens or by modulating the collateral effects of antibiotic treatment on the commensal microbiome. Accordingly, knowledge of the gut resistome composition could enable more effective and individualized treatment of bacterial infections. Yet, rapid workflows for resistome characterization are lacking. To address this challenge we developed the poreFUME workflow that deploys functional metagenomic selections and nanopore sequencing to resistome mapping. We demonstrate the approach by functionally characterizing the gut resistome of an ICU patient. The accuracy of the poreFUME pipeline is >97 % sufficient for the reliable annotation of antibiotic resistance genes. The poreFUME pipeline provides a promising approach for efficient resistome profiling that could inform antibiotic treatment decisions in the future.