Man-made microbial resistances in built environments

Alexander Mahnert (), Christine Moissl-Eichinger, Markus Zojer, David Bogumil, Itzhak Mizrahi, Thomas Rattei, José Luis Martinez and Gabriele Berg
Additional contact information
Alexander Mahnert: Graz University of Technology
Christine Moissl-Eichinger: Medical University Graz
Markus Zojer: University of Vienna
David Bogumil: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Itzhak Mizrahi: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Thomas Rattei: University of Vienna
José Luis Martinez: Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia, CSIC
Gabriele Berg: Graz University of Technology

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat to global public health, but little is known about the effects of microbial control on the microbiota and its associated resistome. Here we compare the microbiota present on surfaces of clinical settings with other built environments. Using state-of-the-art metagenomics approaches and genome and plasmid reconstruction, we show that increased confinement and cleaning is associated with a loss of microbial diversity and a shift from Gram-positive bacteria, such as Actinobacteria and Firmicutes, to Gram-negative such as Proteobacteria. Moreover, the microbiome of highly maintained built environments has a different resistome when compared to other built environments, as well as a higher diversity in resistance genes. Our results highlight that the loss of microbial diversity correlates with an increase in resistance, and the need for implementing strategies to restore bacterial diversity in certain built environments.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08864-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-08864-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08864-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().