Research Projects

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health concern, with wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) often being hotspots for its spread. Although wastewater is treated to reduce bacterial load, a small proportion of resistant bacteria still reach the natural environment. In India, wastewater has not been incorporated into any health surveillance system, making timely assessment of AMR composition and distribution crucial for understanding the prevalence of pathogens in environmental reservoirs and their spread in communities. Two fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) serve as surveillance tools for public health risks. Various methods have been used to identify the genetic contexts of AMR, but conventional culture-based assays and polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods are insufficient. The most common NGS platforms (Illumina) have high costs, slow turnaround times, and immobility issues. The proposed proposal aims to comprehensively analyze antibiotic resistomes in WWTPs using the Nanopore-based metagenomic sequencing approach. The MinION Mk1C sequencer from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) is a compact, portable device that combines hardware for running experiments with a fully-integrated computer for base calling and real-time data analysis. The bioinformatics analysis pipeline will be optimized to assign specific taxonomic and functional categories, and the resulting data will be compared to other published methods and Illumina sequencing data.