Research Projects

Acinetobacter baumannii, a Gram negative bacterium, is a major global cause of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and multi-drug resistance. It infects 600,000 to 1,400,000 people annually, with a significant increase in prevalence in India. A. baumannii develops phenotypic tolerance to high doses of antibiotics without acquiring antibiotic resistant genes. However, the natural habitats and presence of reservoirs outside the clinical/hospital environment and those with close contact with communities are not well understood. The phenotype-genotype discrepancy of A. baumannii on antibiotic resistance needs to be addressed to effectively handle antimicrobial resistance. To achieve effective "One Health," researchers propose collecting and analyzing strains from environmental, animal, and human origin and performing systematic genome-level analysis to understand A. baumannii genotype distribution among animals and the environment. The isolates will be categorized as low and high resistance through antibiotic susceptibility testing and compared with genomics, phenotype resistance, morphological characteristics, and virulence. This study aims to provide information on clonal linage, antibiotic resistance genes, commonality among environment, animals, and human isolates, and clarify phenotype-genotype discrepancies among A. baumannii strains.