Analyzing possible intersections in the resistome among human, animal, and environment matrices

Could bacteriophages transfer antibiotic resistance genes from environmental bacteria to human-body associated bacterial populations?

Environments without any contact with anthropogenic antibiotics show a great abundance of antibiotic resistance genes that use to be chromosomal and are part of the core genes of the species that harbor them. Some of these genes are shared with human pathogens where they appear in mobile genetic elements. Diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in non-contaminated environments is much greater than in human and animal pathogens, and in environments contaminated with antibiotic from anthropogenic activities. This suggests the existence of some bottleneck effect for the mobilization of antibiotic resistance genes among different biomes. Bacteriophages have characteristics that make them suitable vectors between different biomes, and as well for transferring genes from biome to biome. Recent metagenomic studies and detection of bacterial genes by genomic techniques in the bacteriophage fraction of different microbiota provide indirect evidences that the mobilization of genes mediated by phages, including antibiotic resistance genes, is far more relevant than previously thought. Our hypothesis is that bacteriophages might be of critical importance for evading one of the bottlenecks, the lack of ecological connectivity that modulates the pass of antibiotic resistance genes from natural environments such as waters and soils, to animal and human microbiomes. This commentary concentrates on the potential importance of bacteriophages in transferring resistance genes from the environment to human and animal body microbiomes, but there is no doubt that transduction occurs also in body microbiomes.