Antimicrobial peptides in the global microbiome

Antimicrobial peptides are a promising new class of antimicrobials that could address the antibiotic resistance crisis, which poses a major threat to human health. These peptides are present in all kingdoms of life, but especially in microorganisms, having multiple origins in diverse taxa. To date,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Chen, Bingfeng, Zhang, Zhenyan, Zhang, Qi, Xu, Nuohan Xu, Lu, Tao|||0000-0002-2030-3813, Wang, Tingzhang, Hong, Wenjie, Fu, Zhengwei|||0000-0003-3351-3075, Peñuelas, Josep|||0000-0002-7215-0150
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:284315
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/284315
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1021/acs.est.3c01664
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Antibiotic
Antimicrobial peptide
Resistance
Metagenome-assembled genomes
Health risk
Biosynthesis
Descripción
Sumario:Antimicrobial peptides are a promising new class of antimicrobials that could address the antibiotic resistance crisis, which poses a major threat to human health. These peptides are present in all kingdoms of life, but especially in microorganisms, having multiple origins in diverse taxa. To date, there has been no global study on the diversity of antimicrobial peptides, the hosts in which these occur, and the potential for resistance to these agents. Here, we investigated the diversity and number of antimicrobial peptides in four main habitats (aquatic, terrestrial, human, and engineered) by analyzing 52,515 metagenome-assembled genomes. The number of antimicrobial peptides was higher in the human gut microbiome than in other habitats, and most hosts of antimicrobial peptides were habitat-specific. The relative abundance of genes that confer resistance to antimicrobial peptides varied between habitats and was generally low, except for the built environment and on human skin. The horizontal transfer of potential resistance genes among these habitats was probably constrained by ecological barriers. We systematically quantified the risk of each resistance determinant to human health and found that nearly half of them pose a threat, especially those that confer resistance to multiple AMPs and polymyxin B. Our results help identify the biosynthetic potential of antimicrobial peptides in the global microbiome, further identifying peptides with a low risk of developing resistance.